It really was Marie. Naked as the day she was born, frozen to the spot, and scent of her fear was strong enough to nearly drown the stench of sickness wafting from Vasquez.
“Marie? What are you doing out here?” Logan asked fiddling with the straps that kept Vasquez tied to him. He lowered the woman carefully on the ground and took a step towards Marie. She let out a whimper and started backing away.
“Marie? Marie, wait… Shit.”
She fled to opposite direction, running away from him, away from the base, towards open desert.
“Wait here. I’ll go and see what’s her problem,” Logan told to Vasquez. Woman nodded, unwrapping the straps from around her with clumsy fingers.
He started after Marie. It wasn’t hard to catch her. He grabbed her from behind and they both fell on the sand, Marie screaming and kicking, trying to struggle free from his hold. He managed to pin her down and keep her from hurting him, but holding her like this made him feel like a world-class asshole. She was crying and avoiding his gaze, twisting her body and arms in an attempt to get free.
“Marie. Marie! Stop!” Something was wrong. So wrong that he couldn’t quite put his finger on it, not before Marie calmed down a bit and stench of her fear started to evaporate and turn to something else entirely. His own scent, mingling with horrid stench of artificial hormones was pushing through every pore on Marie’s skin.
“What the hell is going on?”
“You’re going to be a daddy again…”
“This is fucking unbelievable!” He was unable to sit still and listen when Marie checked Vasquez’s wound and started telling what had happened after he left the base. He paced, kicked and screamed until he was too tired to move and his voice was only hoarse whisper.
“I had agreed with Ariadne that I’d go to her as soon as you left. I got cold feet. Stayed back home the whole day. Next morning, that… That was yesterday, I think… I finally decided to stop hiding. When I got to the training facility they told me that all the contacts to your team had been severed. That they thought that you all were dead. I didn’t believe them. You promised to come back, so you couldn’t be dead. So I wasn’t that worried, and we… Ariadne and I decided to start the test anyway. I was already in the tank when they came. Five of them. From another department. They… They told that I was too old, but that they’d try it anyway because it had worked before and you were gone and they needed another you… They had samples of your sperm. Don’t know when they got those. Probably at the same time when they installed those lasers in to your hands…” Marie’s voice broke. She took few calming breaths and closed her eyes, then shook her head. When she opened her eyes, her gaze locked straight to his burning eyes.
“They strapped me down, pumped me full of stuff that was supposed to wake up my ovaries and uterus and waited for a while. Then they impregnated me. My mutation kicked in, the blue mist, and they had to stay away from me. I just walked out from there and started running.”
He could hear Vasquez whistling, then muttering something to Marie. He could see Vasquez sitting up slowly and moving to hug Marie who was now crying with great, heaving sobs. He could hear and see, feel the small grains of sand digging in to his knees through his pants, but he was unable to move. Not again. Goddamned, not again! Thought swirled around in his head, blocking everything else from its path until even the simple task of breathing became almost impossible. He closed his eyes and tried to block off Marie’s sobs and Vasquez’s silently whispered reassurances. Stood up slowly, forcing his numb muscles to obey.
Now it all made sense. Strange, unmarked vehicle speeding away when they approached the enemy base. The fact that greenies seemed to know they were coming. Alert state of the enemy base.
There had been another team, sent several days before his team. The real recon team. His team had been expendable, sent there to hopefully destroy the enemy base while researchers back at home base had been delving in to secrets the other team had extracted.
“Bodycount?”
“Sir, yes, sir.”
“I have some things to take care of at the base. You will stay here and take care of my wife while I’m gone. There should be enough water left for you two until I get back.”
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