Fallen Hunter by Mike Wyant Jr

Author:Mike Wyant Jr. [Wyant Jr., Mike]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Theogony Books
Published: 2022-06-28T04:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 34

They wouldn’t stop shaking. Her hands. Constance stared at them, willed them to slow, to rest, but they didn’t.

It was that fucking Hunter’s fault. She knew it. Somehow—some way—she’d caused this mess. Before she arrived, it’d been a year since Argus One’s last incident, but now? Now…

It’d been a long time since Constance had felt fear that wasn’t existential, but true terror, but when Argus One had been in the other room, its claws ticking along the floor in an asynchronous staccato, she’d frozen. Locked up, hugging herself in the corner of the room, praying to anything listening that the Imp couldn’t smell her, wouldn’t notice.

The panic had been so real, so all encompassing, she’d forgotten about Argus One’s programming. No, that was a lie. She hadn’t forgotten the work they’d done, but when the time had come to test it, she’d fled instead of wrangling the beast.

Coward. Fake. A stab of guilt hit her in the gut. Her vision blurred. It’s your fault. Everything is your fault.

The voice wasn’t wrong. Not this time. She’d been weak. Craven.

Constance turned her hands over in her lap, the sterile light of her saferoom highlighting the blossoming liver spots, the harshening lines in her palms. How like her mother’s they looked now, life fading away despite her decades of research and treatments. And, just like her mother, one day her skin would turn to purpling paper, bones jutting through it at harsh angles, as she tried and failed to draw her final breath. It’d been seventy years since her mother died, all of it spent holding the same fate at bay.

It didn’t have to be that way. Constance licked painted lips, heart hammering in her chest, and turned to the small box on the table. There it was. Salvation. Her future.

Immortality.

She stood, unsteady in her heels for the first time in years, yet she still closed the distance quickly. The clack of her pumps sent a shiver of panic down her spine. They sounded just like Argus One’s nails.

The box was unadorned, but white and opaque, obscuring its contents with its plainness. She touched it, the cool, smooth plastic reassuring beneath her fingers.

With trembling hands, Constance opened it. Inside sat the longest needle she’d ever seen and several vials of fluid. All three were marked with a warning label, an exclamation point wrapped in a red triangle. Terry had dropped these off earlier in the day. The plan had been to bring in a surrogate to test the serum on; a cloned bonobo from Earth was currently en route for the test.

She stared, fingernails tapping the glass vials individually, left to right, then back again.

Tick tick tick tick, tick tick tick tick…

Just like the Imp.

The helplessness from earlier flooded to the fore. Smothered in darkness, crouched in the corner, head on her knees, arms around her neck, rocking back and forth. Praying.

So much praying.

To who? To what? There’d been no real deliverance, not truly. Her people lay dead, eviscerated.

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