Alien: Prototype by Tim Waggoner;

Author:Tim Waggoner;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Random House LLC (Publisher Services)

14

“I’m saying the bitch cheated,” Paolo said.

Saul Caswell walked through a section of the Personnel building which residents called the Mall, Paolo Scoggins on his left, Oralia Bergqvist on his right. The three guards continually swept their gazes back and forth as they passed various small shops and food booths. Off-duty personnel walked up and down the corridor, chatting and laughing, enjoying the day. Saul wondered if any of them would be laughing if they knew about the deaths in the warehouse.

He doubted it—which was why management had ordered that the information be kept quiet for now. Saul understood. The last thing they needed was a facility-wide panic, but he wished management had come up with some pretext to make people go to their quarters and stay there. They had no idea if they were dealing with disease or something else, something potentially far worse. Either way, people would be safer in their quarters than strolling around in the open like this.

But he was just a lowly guard. Management didn’t care what he thought. As far as they were concerned, people like him weren’t much better than synthetics. He was supposed to do as he was told and ask no questions. But Saul had questions this day. Lots.

“How could she have cheated?” Oralia asked. “She lost way more hands than she won.”

“The last hand was the biggest pot,” Paolo said. He sounded to Saul like a whiny little boy.

“We all lost credits on that hand,” Oralia said. “Except Valerie, of course.”

Paolo’s jaw tightened and he pressed his lips together, as if trying to keep from saying something he might regret later.

Oralia continued.

“And even if she did cheat, what’s the big deal? If cheating at cards was illegal in the Lodge, we’d have to lock up most of the population. Our brig isn’t big enough to hold them all. We’d probably have to lower a giant dome-shaped cage over the whole damn facility.”

“Why stop there?” Saul said. “Why not put the entire planet in a cage?”

“That would save us a lot of time,” Oralia agreed.

“Save us a lot of walking, too,” Saul put in. “My feet are killing me.”

“Go ahead,” Paolo said. “Laugh it up, but you both lost as many credits as I did on that hand.”

“True,” Saul said.

“We’re just not obsessing over it,” Oralia added.

“Bigger fish to fry,” Saul said.

“I’m going to get my money back from her, one way or another,” Paolo said. “It’s the principle of the thing.”

Saul did believe that Valerie had cheated, but she was an extremely attractive woman—confident, smart, forceful—and he hoped to see her again, maybe even get her into bed. Who cared if she cheated at cards if she was hot?

The Mall ended at the beginning of the corridor which led to the Bioscience building. The shops here were grungy and rundown: a cheap tattoo parlor called Ink it Over, a hotdog stand with a sign that claimed their dogs were made from “100% Recycled Meat,” and a smoke shop called Gaspers that sold “Nearly Non-Carcinogenic Cigarettes.

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