It had been a curiously
unsatisfying mission. The Mysterons had delivered a new threat in the small
hours of the morning, one with an extremely short time limit. Fortunately, it
wasn’t one of their cryptic threats – the three-hour time limit and the
biological laboratory target, Warren Biotech, were clearly stated, for a
change.
Spectrum had barely enough time to get there and stop the Mysterons before the deadline. There had been no time for subtlety, and they went in mob-handed, guns blazing. The Mysterons put up a good fight, though, and Scarlet, leading the way as usual, was injured, as usual. Nothing too serious, however, just a scratch really, and he probably wouldn’t even have got that, had he not spotted one of the Mysterons snatch something up from a rack of mini test tubes. Working on the general principal that whatever a Mysteron had got hold of had to be recovered from them as quickly as possible, Scarlet brought him down in a flying rugby tackle on a floor littered with broken glass.
Exactly what the Mysterons
had been after at the laboratory was a bit of a mystery. The director,
Professor Warren, assured them that there had been nothing in the lab that
could possibly interest Martians: “a new form of pesticide, that’s all.” When
pressed for details, he became rather evasive, muttering about how it was
purely experimental, nothing that the agricultural industry would curl up and
die without… Still, if there was one thing that Spectrum had learned since the
first Mysteron threat, it was that it was often no good trying to understand
why the Mysterons chose this, that or the other target. You just had to get in
there and stop them.
The clear-up hadn’t taken
long, either. Between them, Ochre, Blue and Magenta rounded up and finished off
the other Mysteron agents, there were thanks and hand-shakes all round, and the
four Spectrum agents left, with a nagging sense of having been hustled out with
rather unseemly haste.
***
Once Captain Blue announced
that the SPJ had attained cruising height and speed, and had levelled off,
Captain Magenta unbuckled his seat-belt and crossed the passenger cabin to
where Captain Scarlet was sitting. He was nursing a rather nasty gash across his
right forearm, and smiled with relief as Magenta approached with the first aid
box.
“Let’s have a look at that,
before you bleed all over the seat.”
As Magenta took cotton wool,
antiseptic and a dressing out of the first aid box, Scarlet started to roll his
sleeve up over his sore arm. Suddenly, he stopped, and swore softly, hissing at
a sudden stab of pain.
“What is it?” Magenta asked
in concern.
“Don’t know. Feels like
there’s something in there… can you see anything?”
Magenta peered closely at
the long, deep gash. “Glass,” he said. “There’s a chunk of glass in there. Hold
on a minute.” He dug around in the first aid box again, and produced a pair of
narrow-pointed tweezers. He probed the half-healed wound with them for a couple
of minutes, as Scarlet gritted his teeth against the jags of pain lancing
through his arm, then shook his head. “It’s in pretty deep. I can’t get hold of
it. Why don’t I just slap the dressing over it, and Fawn can dig it out later?”
Scarlet sighed. “OK.
Anything to stop you ripping huge chunks off me.”
“Ha!” Magenta snorted,
applying the dressing with a little more force than was actually necessary. “If
that’s all the thanks I get…”
“Just to let you know, guys,
ETA Cloudbase 15 minutes.” Ochre’s voice issued tinnily from the speakers in
the SPJ’s passenger cabin, making the two occupants jump at the sudden break in
the silence.
Scarlet leaned against the
curved inner wall of the SPJ, eyes closed against the too-bright sunlight,
resting his forehead against the cool surface of the window. He’d been
uncharacteristically quiet during the flight back to Cloudbase, and the others
had largely left him alone. Up towards the front of the passenger cabin,
Magenta sat with his feet up, bouncing a tennis ball against the cockpit
bulkhead. Scarlet opened his eyes and glared at him in annoyance – the constant
thump, thump, thump was starting to get on his nerves, exacerbating his already
pounding headache.
“Pack that in, Pat!”
Magenta looked round in
surprise, missing his catch and allowing the ball to go bouncing down the
cabin. “Sorry. Didn’t realise it was bothering you.”
“Well, it is. Cut it out.”
Magenta strolled towards the
back of the passenger cabin to retrieve his ball. Tossing it from hand to hand
on his way back up to his seat, he passed Scarlet, and frowned as he noticed
that the English captain was still holding his arm. “Arm still hurting?”
Scarlet nodded. “Still
bloody sore.”
Magenta looked sympathetic.
“You know,” he began, “you don't always have to charge on ahead, like you’re the
US Cavalry. We’re all big boys now, you know. We can look after ourselves.”
“Yes, I know, Pat. But…” ‘Yes, Pat, I know you can. But the
Mysterons took my life and ripped it inside out. I can’t do anything about
that. What I can do is take the
retrometabolism they inadvertently left me with, and use it against them. And
in a way, I still feel I have to do
that. I have to make amends for what I did when I was… one of them.’ That
was what he wanted to say. What he actually said was: “Well, you know…”
Amazingly, Magenta did seem
to know. “Sure. You’re sure you don't want me to look at that cut again?”
Scarlet waved him away.
“It’ll keep until Fawn gets his paws on it. But thanks anyway.”
Magenta nodded, and turned
to return to his seat.
“But, Pat –”
Magenta stopped and looked
back at Scarlet. “Yeah?”
“Put that bloody ball away.”
Scarlet closed his eyes
again, and swallowed hard against a rising sickness. He wanted some water, but
suddenly lacked the energy to go and get any.
“Are you feeling OK? You
look terrible.”
Scarlet prised his eyes open
once more, squinting up at Magenta.
“Could you get me some
water, Pat?” At least, that’s what he’d intended to say, but the words just
came out as a croaked “… water…”
Alarmed, Magenta fetched a cup
from the cooler and sat down in the seat beside Scarlet, holding the cup to his
colleague’s mouth. Eyes closed once more, Scarlet leaned heavily on Magenta’s
shoulder, his face pale and covered with a film of sweat.
“Feel… sick…”
Magenta flipped his cap-mic
down and spoke softly, but urgently, into it. “Rick? Can you come back here for
a minute, please?”
Captain Ochre, co-piloting
with Blue, arrived just as Scarlet slid sideways, unconscious.
Captain Scarlet let himself
into his quarters, and without bothering to turn on the light, or take off more
than cap, boots and tunic, fell onto his bed. He was exhausted.
It had been a very long, very
hard day.
On the flight back, he’d felt
unaccountably tired. He had no memory of reaching Cloudbase; presumably, he’d
either fallen asleep or passed out before their arrival back at base. His
regeneration had been unusually slow and difficult, and Fawn had kept him in
Sickbay for far longer than normal. He still felt dreadful, and wondered if he
should have stayed the night, after all. But he always slept better in his own
bed. Still lying on top of the covers, he fell into a deep, dream-filled sleep…
Long hair tickled the bare
skin of his chest, and soft lips nuzzled his neck. Without opening his eyes, he
smiled.
“What a nice way to wake up,”
he murmured drowsily.
“If you are awake,” an aristocratic English voice replied. “Coffee?”
“Mmm.” He rolled over onto
his side and opened his eyes. Rhapsody, busy at the coffee-maker, turned her
head and smiled at him.
“Well,” she remarked, “you
made a good night of it, didn’t you?”
Scarlet frowned muzzily.
“Sorry?”
“It’s gone mid-day. You've
been asleep for nearly twelve hours.”
“What!?” Scarlet sat bolt
upright. “Oh, bloody hell, I was supposed to get my report to the Old Man –”
“Don’t worry,” Rhapsody
soothed him. “Adam did that for you. The colonel knows you had a rough time in
Sickbay. He’s heard all about it from the others, and Doctor Fawn.”
“Oh.” Scarlet grimaced at the
mention of Fawn’s name, and at the sudden surge of sick dizziness that make his
head spin and his stomach churn. The doctor had all but tied him to the bed to
get him to stay in Sickbay, but Scarlet had insisted that he was well enough to
be discharged. Almost more than he hated the routine of Sickbay, Scarlet hated
the oh-so-well-hidden ‘told you so’ expression on Fawn’s face when Scarlet
discharged himself too early and had to go creeping back.
He flopped back onto the
pillow, covering his eyes with his forearm. And that brought something else to his attention. He wrinkled his nose
in disgust at the smell of stale sweat, and peeped out apologetically from
under his arm as Rhapsody sat down on the edge of his bed to hand him his
coffee.
“Don’t get too close, love.
I’m not very nice to be near right now. Too knackered to shower last night.”
“So I noticed.” She moved a
little closer, regardless. “Why don’t you have a shower now? The coffee’s hot
enough to last.”
“Good idea.” He rolled out of
bed, treading on something soft as he did so. Frowning, he picked up his
sweater and trousers, thrown in a heap on the floor. Funny, he thought, could’ve
sworn I didn’t take those off before I fell asleep… He sat on the edge of
the bed to wrap the counterpane around him, but stopped, and leaned forward,
hugging his stomach. Rhapsody noticed the movement of the counterpane, laughed,
and fetched a towel from the tiny bathroom. She was about to throw it to him
when she noticed his posture, and pale face.
“Are you all right, Paul?”
she asked anxiously.
“Yes… it’s nothing. Just a
bit queasy. I’m starving. I’ll feel better once I’ve had a wash and something
to eat.”
Eyes screwed shut against the
streams of foam from the shampoo, and ears full of water, Scarlet didn’t hear
the shower door slide open. The first indication that he was no longer alone in
the cubicle came as arms wrapped round his waist from behind, and lips touched
the side of his neck. He turned, took her in his arms and kissed her; she
pushed against his chest, pinning him against the back wall of the shower
cubicle as the warm water poured over them both…
Scarlet woke with a jolt and
a gasp, staring wildly around the darkness of his quarters as the dream
vanished. No shower, no coffee, and most importantly, no Rhapsody. Slowly, and
swallowing hard against the queasiness in his stomach, Scarlet stripped off his
sweater and trousers, dropping them in a heap on the floor beside the bed. For
a moment, he considered showering off the sweat that drenched him, but his eyes
closed inexorably, and it was all he could do to pull the rumpled counterpane
over himself before he sank back into heavy sleep.
***
Some hours later, Scarlet sat
alone at a table in the Officers’ Mess, gazing morosely down at his breakfast
tray. After his disturbed night, he was late to breakfast, and the only other
occupants were a group of white-jacketed technicians, just off night shift and
rather too lively for Scarlet’s liking. They all seemed to be having a rather
earnest, excited conversation, but they were too far away for him to make out
what they were saying. He toyed with the idea of going over and telling them to
keep it down, but a sudden surge of nausea kept him pinned to his seat.
This is stupid, he thought, picking up a piece of toast and
wondering if he could eat it without throwing up. Slowly and experimentally, he
bit off a corner, chewed slowly, and swallowed. “I’ve got to see Doctor Fawn
again,” he muttered savagely, as he gritted his teeth against the sick feeling
that had dogged his dreams and blighted his morning so far. Eschewing his usual
industrial-strength coffee, he washed down half of the slice of toast with
water, and left the Mess with as much speed as his dignity as a Colour Captain
permitted. As he reached the door, a bland-faced man sitting alone in one of
the booths nodded to him, and the voice of one of the technicians reached him
clearly: “He’s going…”
In contrast to the Mess,
Sickbay was a haven of peace and quiet. Fawn greeted him cordially, and invited
him to sit down.
“What can I do for you, Captain?”
he asked politely.
“You were right, I’m still
feeling bloody awful. And please don’t say ‘I told you so’.”
“When do I ever say that?”
Fawn asked, sounding genuinely surprised.
“Well, maybe you don’t say
it, but you look it,” Scarlet sighed.
“And you’re always right.”
With a little extra
prompting, Scarlet told Fawn about the vivid, disturbing dreams of the night
before, although without going into the exact nature of why they’d been disturbing, and the continuous nausea and
dizziness. Fawn looked at him sharply as Scarlet described the symptoms.
“Your sixth sense?”
Scarlet shook his head, then
winced as a headache pounded across the inside of his skull. “Feels different.
More like the most godawful hang-over you can imagine. And then some.”
Fawn smiled sympathetically.
“OK, take your tunic and sweater off, and sit on the table. Let’s have a look
at you.”
The doctor switched on the
arc-light over the examination table, and fetched his stethoscope. As he
approached Scarlet, he was astonished to see the captain jerk backwards,
holding out a hand defensively. Almost immediately, and with a look of total
confusion, Scarlet lowered his hand, closed his eyes and bowed his head.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly.
“I just had – the oddest feeling. It was as if I was lying down, and you were
leaning over me.” He opened his eyes again, looking up at Fawn. “Weird… very
weird. And not very pleasant.”
Fawn’s examination was
thorough, but mercifully quick. “I can’t find anything specific,” he began.
“For some reason you’re still suffering the after-effects of your injury
yesterday. I’ll get you something for the nausea and dizziness.” With that, he
disappeared into another room.
“How long do you think it’ll
last?” Scarlet called.
“Longer than usual… bad regeneration…” Fawn replied from the depths
of his pharmacy.
Scarlet shrugged. “Happens, I
suppose.”
“Sorry…”
Fawn came back, holding a
piece of paper in one hand, and a hypodermic in the other. “Sorry… what did you
say?” Without waiting for an answer, he took Scarlet’s arm, and injected the
contents of the hypodermic. Once again, Scarlet experienced that odd lurch of
perspective, but it was over and gone so quickly, he could almost dismiss it as
nothing. Almost.
Fawn handed him the paper. Scarlet
peered at it; it was a prescription, obviously, but Fawn’s notoriously bad
writing appeared to have got worse, and he couldn’t make out a word of it.
“Hand that in at the dispensary on your way out,” Fawn said. “It’s for some
tablets that should help settle you down. Take two, with meals. Maximum of six.
Come back and see me after breakfast tomorrow, and I’ll take another look at
you. In the meantime, I’ll speak to Colonel White and make sure he knows you’re
unfit for duty. Get dressed – I’ll make the call right away.”
Scarlet slowly pulled on his
sweater and tunic, slid off the couch and made his way into the corridor.
“Thanks, Doc!” he called as
he approached Fawn’s office. Fawn didn’t respond, but as Scarlet passed the
open door, he saw the doctor leaning over his desk making the promised call to
Colonel White, and caught a few words: “bad…
not sure why… can’t afford to lose…”
And those half-heard words
made Scarlet feel sicker than any bad regeneration…
***
It had been so long since
Scarlet had needed any prescription drugs that he almost forgot to stop at the
dispensary. He handed the paper over to the man behind the counter, and waited
patiently while the man read it, slowly and carefully.
As a regular visitor to
Sickbay, Scarlet was pretty sure that he knew everyone who worked there, from
the lowest orderly to the most senior doctors and nurses. But this man, he’d
never seen before. Not in Sickbay, anyway – although his face was unfamiliar
and almost entirely unmemorable, being smooth and bland, devoid of any sense of
personality, Scarlet thought he had seen him before somewhere. And quite
recently, too…
The man returned, carrying a
small bottle which he handed over to Scarlet without a word.
“I haven’t seen you in here
before, have I –” Scarlet peered at the man’s nametag “– Warren?”
The man made no response,
just staring at Scarlet with an intense eye-contact that Scarlet found a little
unnerving.
“Two, three times a day,
right?” he asked.
The man continued to stare –
those dead eyes held Scarlet in place with an almost physical restraint.
Scarlet’s heart pounded painfully as he slowly, and with enormous difficulty,
backed away from the expressionless man. As the dispensary door closed, it was
as if an invisible leash had snapped. Scarlet leaned against the wall of the
corridor outside, breathing hard and swallowing convulsively as the surge of
inexplicable fear slowly ebbed away.
Despite the sickness gnawing
at his stomach, Scarlet was still hungry. Those few bites of toast earlier had
done nothing to allay his post-retrometabolic hunger pangs. Soup, he thought. Chicken soup, and perhaps some bread. Then I’ll take a couple of these
pills and see what they do.
The chattering group of
technicians were still in the Officers’ Mess when he got there. Scarlet frowned
– other ranks had their own Mess. What were they doing in here? Some of them
turned to stare at him as he entered, but he ignored them, crossing to the main
serving counter to examine the lunch menu. As he’d hoped, chicken soup was on
the list, and within moments, he seated himself at a table in one of the side
booths, tearing a chunk off a bread roll and dunking it in the soup. He ate
slowly and carefully, trying hard not to trigger a recurrence of the nausea
that seemed to be fairly quiescent at the moment.
The approach of a familiar
voice made him look up.
“… of no particular
importance,” White was saying to his companion, a man Scarlet was sure he
didn’t know, but was equally sure he’d seen somewhere before. That blandly
smooth face looked disturbingly familiar… White stopped at the booth just
across the aisle from where Scarlet was sitting, and gestured to his companion
to sit. As the man took his seat, he slowly turned his head to look directly at
Scarlet – making an unnervingly intense eye-contact which Scarlet found almost
impossible to break…
The walls of the Officers’
Mess seemed to be closing in; at the same time, the blank eyes of Colonel
White’s companion dominated Scarlet’s field of vision. Everything else was
small, blurred and distant…
Fighting down nausea and
irrational fear, Scarlet left his barely-touched lunch, and all but ran from
the Mess.
***
Without quite knowing how, or
why, Scarlet found himself wandering in the direction of the Officers’ Lounge.
He wasn’t really in the mood for much company, but the only alternative really
was his quarters, and he didn’t much fancy solitude, either. The double doors
whined as they opened – one, slightly slower than the other, slotted into its
recess with a thud. At that moment, something smacked him hard in the chest.
“Hey!” he shouted, bending to
pick up the ball which had bounced off him and wedged itself behind the
bookshelf. A white-jacketed technician took the ball from his hands, and tossed
it back to Magenta, over by the coffee dispenser.
“Sorry, Scarlet,” Magenta
said cheerfully. “That butter-fingered cop was supposed to catch it.”
“Butter-fingered…?”
“I think he means me.” Ochre
appeared from behind the technician, grinning apologetically.
Scarlet sighed. “This isn’t really
the place for ball games, is it?” he asked rhetorically.
Ochre shrugged. “It’s quiet,
it’s dull, we’re bored.”
“Yeah,” Magenta agreed. “Want
to play?” He tossed the ball from hand to hand, looking at Scarlet expectantly.
“No, thanks. And how can you
be bored? I would’ve thought yesterday was excitement enough for anyone.”
“Nah, you grabbed all the
action. All we got was the clean-up.
As usual.”
Scarlet was shocked. Magenta
had never talked to him like that before. Trying to look as if he was just getting
coffee, and not looking for a confrontation, Scarlet approached the coffee
dispenser, and started to pour himself a cup. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
he asked quietly.
Magenta eyed him coolly.
“What’s up? Can’t take a bit of criticism? I suppose it’s never occurred to you
that we’re all perfectly capable of handling Mysterons. But you always have to
jump in, play the hero and take the credit.”
Scarlet just stared at him,
speechless. Unconsciously, he rubbed his chest, where it was still tingling from
the ball’s impact.
“Hey, guys, leave him alone!”
Blue’s voice, from the other side of the lounge, came as a welcome relief.
Scarlet turned away from Magenta and his inexplicable hostility, to greet his
partner. But as he approached, Blue’s welcoming smile turned into a frown.
“Paul! For God’s sake, look at yourself. You look like death warmed over.”
“Yeah, well, he is, isn’t
he?” Grey remarked languidly from the window seat. Everyone else laughed;
Scarlet, suddenly nauseated by the smell of the coffee and the bewildering
attitude of his fellow captains, turned on his heel and all but fled towards
the door. The technician, intent on his work and ignoring the distractions
around him, tested the faulty door again. The hidden winch whined, and the door
thudded closed once more.
“Hey, Scarlet?”
Despite himself, Scarlet
turned at Magenta’s call, and once more, the ball smacked into him.
The technician caught the
ball as it rebounded, this time looking Scarlet straight in the eyes.
Mesmerised, Scarlet couldn’t tear his gaze away from the lifeless eyes and
bland, characterless face of the other man.
He recognised the face – it
was the man he’d twice seen earlier in the Officers’ Mess: once as he’d left
after breakfast, and again at lunchtime with Colonel White, and before that, in
the pharmacy. The face was human, yet not. Once, Scarlet had seen a picture of
the ‘average’ face. Perfectly acceptable, but somehow, chilling in its perfect
symmetry, and lack of individuality. This man had such a face.
“Who are you?” Scarlet
demanded. “Why are you following me? What do you want?”
The man tilted his head
slightly to one side and smiled; a smile that didn’t touch his eyes. Cold, dark
eyes, without a spark of humanity in them. He held Scarlet’s horrified gaze for
a few more seconds before replying: “Haven’t you worked it out yet – Earthman?”
Friday,
mid-morning
The
doors to Sickbay flew open as a stretcher was pushed through them at some
speed. White-jacketed medics gathered around, lifting the unconscious captain
onto an examination table.
Fawn,
warned beforehand by Magenta and Ochre, turned his attention first to the
half-healed gash across Scarlet’s arm. He peeled off the dressing, noting in
passing, and with approval, that the cut had been properly cleaned.
“There’s
no way that such a minor injury could've caused this state of collapse. Let’s
have a look at this piece of glass…”
Fawn
carefully extended the cut, and, with considerably more ease than Magenta,
excised the sliver. It was just over two centimetres long, bevelled at the top,
and it bore the remnants of some lettering. Holding it delicately in a pair of
forceps, Fawn peered at what was left of the label. “…ren Biot… Warren Biotech?” He placed the sliver in a dish,
and handed it to one of his assistants. “Get this to the lab. I need a full
analysis, fast!”
It
didn’t take the lab long to identify the piece of glass as a shard from a mini
test tube, and the residue on it as a particularly virulent poison of a so-far
unknown extraction.
Doctor
Fawn was worried. Scarlet’s retrometabolism was obviously doing its best to
combat the lethal toxin, but the battle was a difficult one. Scarlet was
drifting in and out of consciousness, delirious with a high fever, and mumbling
incoherently. Sweat poured off him. A white-coated nurse gently sponged away
the worst of it, and carefully applied sensors to his chest. His skin twitched
as she did so; inconsequentially, Fawn suddenly remembered that Scarlet had
once remarked that the sensors tickled. A
good sign, the doctor mused. He’s
still aware of externals.
Once
all the sensors were in place, and connected to their respective monitors, the
medical team had a far more accurate – and disturbing – picture of their
patient’s progress.
“He’s
dreaming,” one of the medics murmured, intently watching the EEG readings.
“Look at that brain activity pattern. Never seen anything THAT erratic.”
Fawn
was more concerned with the cardiac monitor. It was showing a shallow,
irregular heartbeat – in itself, nothing unusual for Scarlet in the early
stages of regeneration from serious injury, but not from an insignificant
little scratch. The toxin must be
something spectacular to cause this reaction, Fawn thought. He turned to
his team. “Make sure the crash cart’s ready,” he said. “He’s having a difficult
time, and I want to give him as much help as possible.”
A
low moan brought Fawn’s attention sharply back to his patient. Scarlet was
moving, writhing in pain as the poison invaded every part of his body.
Suddenly, he convulsed, retching and curling into a foetal position, hugging
his stomach.
“He’ll
fall off the bed if this carries on,” Fawn snapped. “Get some restraints on
him.”
Two
nurses pushed gently but firmly on Scarlet’s chest and shoulders, trying to
ease him back down onto the bed. Suddenly, as if disturbed by the contact,
Scarlet’s eyes flew open; he gasped, then fell back as he lost consciousness
once more.
The
white-jacketed medics went efficiently about their business, reporting on the
various readings from the numerous monitors that charted Scarlet’s condition.
Fawn noted these reports almost unconsciously, letting their remarks fade into
a background chatter. They sounded earnest, with a muted excitement at dealing
with the most unusual patient any medical practitioner could hope for.
Sometimes, Fawn thought, they were all in danger of concentrating too much on
Scarlet-the-medical-oddity, and forgetting Scarlet-the-person.
“Is
this a good moment?” a quiet voice asked from the doorway. Fawn jumped,
startled – he hadn’t realised just how intently he’d been concentrating on his
patient, to the exclusion of everything else.
“Colonel
White! Sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”
White
nodded. “You looked busy. I didn’t want to disturb you. How is he?”
Fawn
glanced back at Scarlet, now lying quietly on his monitored bed. “Not good, I’m
afraid. It’s taking much longer than usual.”
“What’s
going wrong?”
Fawn
sighed. “I’ve no idea. Bad regeneration is all I can say, I’m sorry.”
White
bit his lip, and glanced at the motionless figure on the bed. White-jacketed
medics surrounded him, checking vital signs, making entries in the medical log,
and doing other, less comprehensible things as they cared for their patient.
“Blood
pressure’s dropping,” one of the team reported urgently, abruptly attracting
Fawn’s attention. Others confirmed that Scarlet’s vital signs had gone into a
sudden, catastrophic decline. Fawn leaned over his patient for a short moment,
noting the short, shallow, irregular breaths, the feverish flush that coloured
the pale face, and the flutter of rapid eye movement behind the closed eyelids.
Still dreaming, then – what does he dream
about? Fawn wondered inconsequentially. The doctor straightened up, issuing
a series of succinct orders; a nurse appeared by his side and handed him a
hypodermic.
“He’s
going!” a medic reported urgently, watching the rapid diminution of the traces
on the medical monitors.
“Not
if I can help it!” Fawn growled, and injected the contents of the hypodermic
into Scarlet’s arm.
Silence
fell in Sickbay; Fawn and his team kept a close eye on the monitors which, for
a few tense moments showed no change. Then at last, Scarlet seemed to relax. He
drew a long breath, and the readings began to rise. They were still low – far
too low for Fawn’s peace of mind – but at least it was an improvement.
White
let out the breath he didn’t realise he’d been holding. “That looked bad for a
while, didn’t it?” he said quietly.
Fawn
nodded. “This keeps happening. He drifts in and out of consciousness, vital
signs are so unstable it’s all we can do to keep track of them – it’s as if
he’s taking one step forward and two steps back. I’m not sure why, and he can’t
afford to lose any more ground. He’s so weak now, I’m not sure how much longer
he can hold on.”
A
lab technician approached and cleared his throat to attract Fawn’s attention.
“Doctor
Fawn? There’s something in the latest blood sample you really ought to see.
Right away, please, sir.”
Excusing
himself to White, Fawn swiftly crossed the floor to the bench, and peered through
the microscope at the blood smear. It was endlessly fascinating to watch the
infinitesimally small battle being waged on the glass slide – enhanced
antibodies that had never been seen in a normal human, attacking the deadly
poison. However, something was going wrong this time. As Fawn watched, a toxin
particle, surrounded and apparently overwhelmed by a clump of antibodies,
underwent a change. Around it, antibodies and red and white blood cells
collapsed and disintegrated, the toxin particle swam over to another of its
kind, touched it, and the same change occurred to the second particle. Within
seconds, every particle of poison in the blood smear had undergone the same
transformation, and renewed the attack on Scarlet’s immune system.
Retrometabolism kicked in; damaged cells regenerated and mutated, once again
fighting off the assault. But it looked as if the battle was pretty evenly
matched; for every toxin particle that was surrounded and destroyed, an
antibody or blood cell was also fatally wounded. Could Scarlet have at last met
something he couldn’t fight?
“Nano-technology?”
Fawn wondered. “A smart toxin that can adapt to its victim’s defences…” He
looked up at Colonel White, who had come to join him at the bench.
“‘Experimental
pesticide of no particular importance’, eh?” Colonel White growled. “I think
I’d better have a word with Professor Warren.”
***
Professor Bernard Warren was a
worried man. “It was only after your agents left, Colonel White, that we realised
that one of the broken test tubes had contained a sample of TS-20.”
“TS-20?”
White queried.
The
professor dismissed the query. “Just a naming convention of no significance
outside my company.”
“Professor
Warren – exactly WHAT is TS-20?” White asked.
“As
I explained to your agents, Colonel, it’s an experimental pesticide -”
“We
have reason to believe it’s rather more than that, Professor Warren. The
Mysterons wouldn’t be interested in something as harmless as you claim this
‘pesticide’ is. However, they WOULD be interested in a smart toxin. One that
can adapt to anything the victim might do to combat it. A toxin combined, in
fact, with nano-technology. Am I right, Professor Warren?”
The
silence at the other end of the line was eloquent. At last, Warren spoke again.
“How
did you find out?”
White
didn’t answer the question. “What effect would this toxin have on a human
body?”
The
professor looked, if possible, even paler with shock than before.
“Catastrophic,” he admitted in a small voice. “The nano-bots are programmed to
analyse the immune system of any living thing they infest, and alter the
structure of the toxin to destroy it. They were originally designed to react
only to the physiology of certain kinds of insects and crop-blights, but we
found that all living creatures would be affected. The bots are too good at
what they were designed to do. We’ve been experimenting on cutting down their
range. But then the Mysterons found out about them… How did they find out?”
White
sighed. “If I knew that, Professor, Spectrum would be much closer to nullifying
their menace. I want everything you have on this toxin, the nano-bots, and what
the antidote is, please, Professor. And I want it now.”
“I’m
afraid there is no antidote, Colonel White. The bots adapt too fast for any
kind of chemical or biological counter-agent. The only way to be sure of
destroying them is with high-voltage electricity.”
***
Fawn
listened in grim silence as White passed on what he had learned in his
conversation with Professor Warren.
“The
bots have been multiplying at an astonishing rate,” he said heavily as White
finished. “They’ve invaded every part of Scarlet’s body, including his brain.
He’s losing this one, Colonel.”
White sighed. “If the nano-bots
don’t kill him, the electricity might.”
When
that statement got no reaction from Fawn, the colonel looked curiously at his
Chief Medical Officer. The doctor was gazing distractedly into the distance,
frowning in concentration. White waited, not wanting to interrupt what might be
a vital train of thought.
“Only
electricity will destroy the bots…” Fawn murmured, thinking out loud. “But that
voltage could well kill Scarlet, too… the current has to be applied to the
contamination in his blood, but not to his body… therefore, the electrocution
has to take place outside his body… yes!”
Fawn
leapt off his chair. “I think I know how I can do this. It’s an appalling risk,
but one I think we’ve got to take. There’s a lot to set up, and not much time
to do it in. So if you’ll excuse me…?”
White
stood up. “Of course. Keep me informed, when you have time.”
Scarlet had intended to go to
the Control Room, to confront Colonel White about the identity of his lunch companion,
but instead found himself, bewildered, sick and frightened, back in the
Officers’ Mess.
The Mess was deserted now,
except for a small group of people in the far distance, so far away that
Scarlet couldn’t even be sure whether they were real, or a figment of his
imagination. A faint beeping noise sounded from somewhere, mixed with other
sounds that were too vague and far-away to identify.
Warren loomed up suddenly out
of nowhere, his hand shooting out as fast as a striking snake to grip Scarlet’s
throat. He moved forward, pushing Scarlet backwards towards the wall.
“The Mysterons will be
avenged, Captain Scarlet. You have thwarted us too often – now, with the
assistance of the nano-bots multiplying themselves in your bloodstream, you
will die very soon. The only way of destroying the bots will also destroy you.
And it is a satisfying irony that Spectrum’s own medical services will be
responsible for your death. Whether they act or not, will make no difference.”
Scarlet struggled to breathe,
to break away from the iron grip on his throat. All this talk of nano-bots made
no sense to him. All he knew right now was this stranger was stronger by far
than he was. Mysterons had invaded Cloudbase, and no-one else knew. He had to
break away, warn everyone…
Fawn steeled himself not to
leave his current task of setting up the blood-scrubber as sounds reached him
of his team struggling to keep Scarlet alive for long enough to receive the
dramatic and risky treatment Fawn had devised. He heard the crack of the defibrillator, and a murmur
of satisfaction as Scarlet was once again brought back from the brink of death.
Scarlet somehow found the
strength to clench his fist and drive it into the face of the Mysteron in front
of him. There was a satisfying crack
as Warren’s nose flattened under his fist, and Scarlet wrenched himself free
from the man’s suffocating grip, taking several swift paces towards the exit -
A quiet voice from behind him
froze him in his tracks.
“You cannot escape. This
time, you will die.”
Against his will, slowly, as
if hypnotised, Scarlet turned, his hand resting on the handle of the door that
would lead him out into the corridor. If he were ever able to open it…
Warren approached, slowly.
There was no sign of any injury, no blood, no crookedness of the nose that
Scarlet was certain he’d broken. With agonising slowness, Scarlet pushed the
door open behind him and edged backwards. Warren moved towards him, at the same
pace, his blandly expressionless face holding more menace than the most savage
snarl Scarlet had ever seen on the face of an enemy.
Fawn stepped back from the
table, and surveyed the mass of tubing, pumps and containers that he and his
assistants had put together in such a hurry. It had to work – the alternative
was unthinkable. At last, he allowed himself to look round at the bed on which
Scarlet was fighting for his life. Fawn studied the readings from the various
monitors that displayed and recorded Scarlet’s vital signs – each one told of a
man now almost too weak to survive. Retrometabolism was fighting a rear-guard
action, but the bots were multiplying faster and faster now, invading almost
every part of Scarlet’s body.
Fawn drew a deep breath. He
looked round at his team, and nodded. “Let’s do it. And make it fast…”
The face flickered like
something out of a nightmare, shifting rapidly between the blandly average
features of Warren and the ravaged, sunken face of Captain Black.
Scarlet backed away warily,
his heart pounding. Something moved at the very edge of his vision – fearing an
attack, Scarlet risked a quick glance away from the approaching figure whose
appearance was becoming more and more unstable. Warren lunged forward, a knife
glittering in his hand, his face morphing suddenly and incongruously into that
of Doctor Fawn. Startled, Scarlet ducked and side-stepped, but the very tip of
the knife caught his left arm, and blood started to flow.
Clutching his arm, Scarlet
took an incautious and hasty step backwards, tripping over one of the small
service robots that usually carried out their cleaning duties so unobtrusively.
Sprawled on the floor, Scarlet scrambled frantically backwards as
Warren/Black/Fawn bore down on him, still brandishing the knife. Once again,
the knife stabbed down…
With a half-sob of fear and
desperation, Scarlet wrenched himself away and ran, literally for his life,
down the corridor.
Something was definitely
wrong here – Scarlet rarely saw the little service robots, but now they were
everywhere, hundreds of them, scurrying through the corridor, impeding his
flight. He could barely keep his footing as the robots bumped and jostled
around him, their dark-red carapaces glinting in the half-light.
Electric flashes sparked
through the thickening air as Scarlet struggled onwards, now gasping for breath.
His pace slowed to a crawl – try as hard as he might, he could move only in
slow-motion, like wading through treacle on leaden legs. Tiny darts of
electricity stabbed at him over and over, from all sides, until finally, in
utter exhaustion, he fell to his knees, head bowed in defeat. Warren caught up
with him, gripping Scarlet’s arms tightly, and wrenching his head up. Scarlet
gazed into the eyes of his murderer, too exhausted to feel anything but a dull
apprehension. He waited for the final stroke…
But something was happening,
something so bizarre that Scarlet’s tired mind could barely take it in. As
Warren’s face contorted with rage and hate, it began to lose cohesion… no
longer solid, it started to fragment… his entire body began to disintegrate… In
a soundless detonation, the body of Mr Warren exploded and dissipated in a
sparkling rain…
Utterly spent, Scarlet didn’t
move. The air thickened and chilled around him as the last of the light faded,
and he fell forward…
A brilliant light, and a low thump-thump sound in the background,
woke him some unknowable time later. He pushed himself up, staring around in
bewilderment at thousands of inert, silent service robots that filled the
corridor wall to wall, and into the far distance. Colonel White stood a few
paces away, leaning against the wall.
“You’ve taken your time,” he
said. “Come on, you’re late.”
“Late? Late for what?”
Scarlet asked as he struggled to his feet with some difficulty.
White merely glanced back at
him over his shoulder, then strode down the corridor and through the door of
the Officers’ Mess. Scarlet followed as fast as he could, tripping and
struggling through the carpet of robots, leaving a trail of blood from the stab
wound in his arm.
After what seemed like an
eternity, he pushed open the door of the Mess. He could just about make out
White in the far distance as he moved towards one of the long tables. The
chairs had been cleared away to the side of the room, and the boisterous group
of technicians, now silent, clustered around the table.
White turned and beckoned.
Full of unreasoning dread, Scarlet moved forward.
The technicians made room for
him, and Scarlet peered at the table. The body that lay on the clean tablecloth
had a wound in the right arm, INTO which, incredibly, blood was flowing.
Scarlet glanced down at his left arm; the blood flowing OUT of his identical
wound had slowed to a trickle.
White faced Scarlet, and
gestured towards the table. “Come on, then.”
Now that he looked more
closely, Scarlet realised that the colonel’s head of thick white hair wasn’t
hair at all, but a close-fitting surgical cap. His white tunic was actually a
white surgical gown. The eyes that looked at him with such compassion over the
top of the face-mask were not the eyes of Colonel White, but of Doctor Fawn.
As if in a dream, Scarlet
stepped up to the table. The figure in white gave him an encouraging nod, then
raised his hands. Incapable of registering any more shocks, Scarlet merely
noted, with a kind of dull horror, that the doctor had no hands. Instead, his
arms ended in black, paddle-shaped objects…
With shocking speed, the
doctor punched Scarlet hard on the chest with both paddle-hands. The body on
the table jerked spasmodically; Scarlet gasped, struggling for breath against
the sudden, crushing pain in his chest, and staggered backwards against the
table. The room started to spin. Sickened, Scarlet clutched at one of the
technicians for support, and through the gathering darkness, felt himself
sinking through a warm, comforting nothingness into a pain-free silence.
Doctor Fawn replaced the
shock paddles on the crash cart, and pulled off his mask with a sigh of relief.
One of his assistants reported the patient’s rapidly improving vital signs, and
Fawn could see that Scarlet was now deeply asleep – a normal, restorative sleep
instead of the delirium and feverish semi-consciousness of the last few hours.
“Are you all right, Tom?”
Fawn asked the nurse who was putting the crash cart away.
Tom nodded, and showed his
bare arm. Bruises were already starting to blossom on his skin where Scarlet
had grabbed the arm in his delirium. “He’s got a hell of a grip,” the nurse
grinned. “I’m glad he passed out when he did.”
Fawn turned his attention
back to his sleeping patient. His assistants started to dismantle the
jury-rigged blood-scrubber, carefully removing the thin tubing from Scarlet’s
arms. It had been an enormous gamble, even for someone with Scarlet’s
astonishing powers of recovery; draining all the blood from his body had been
an appalling risk, but it had paid off. He picked up the jar containing a
reddish sludge, all that remained of the millions of nano-bots that had invaded
Scarlet’s body from the sliver of glass. Warren Biotech had a real winner on
their hands with these little machines – the electric current needed to destroy
them had been almost as strong as that of a fully-charged Mysteron gun. Fawn
wondered briefly if Colonel White would permit Warren to continue developing
them. Ah well, not his problem. What WAS his problem was how to dispose of
these little nasties safely…
***
Captain Scarlet let himself
into his quarters, and without bothering to turn on the light, fell onto his
bed. He was exhausted. His regeneration had been unusually slow and difficult,
and Fawn had kept him in Sickbay for far longer than normal. He felt a lot
better, but wondered nevertheless if he should have stayed the night, after
all. But he always slept better in his own bed. He dragged his clothes off and,
burrowing under the quilt, fell into a deep, dreamless sleep…
Long hair tickled the bare
skin of his chest, and soft lips brushed against his forehead. Without opening
his eyes, he smiled.
“What a nice way to wake
up,” he murmured drowsily.
“If you are awake,” an aristocratic English voice replied. “Coffee?”
“Mmm.” He rolled onto his
side and opened his eyes. Rhapsody, now busy at the coffee-maker, turned her
head and smiled at him.
“How are you feeling now,
love?” she asked quietly.
“Much better, thanks.”
He stretched luxuriously, extending
his arms above his head until his joints popped. And that brought something else to his attention. He wrinkled his nose
in disgust at the smell of stale sweat, and peeped out apologetically from
under his arm as Rhapsody sat down on the edge of his bed to give him his
coffee.
“Don’t get too close, love.
I’m not very nice to be near right now. Too knackered to shower last night.”
“So I noticed.” She moved a
little closer, regardless. “Why don’t you have a shower now? The coffee’s hot
enough to last.”
“Good idea.” He rolled out
of bed, treading on something soft as he did so. Frowning, he picked up his
uniform sweater and trousers, thrown in a heap on the floor. I’m getting sloppy in my old age, he
mused, picking them up and throwing them onto the chair opposite the bed. He
sat on the edge of the bed, then stopped, suddenly mindful of Rhapsody’s
presence in the room and his own state of dishabille. Surreptitiously, he
started to wrap himself in the counterpane, but Rhapsody noticed and just
laughed.
“Why so modest, all of a
sudden?” she giggled. “I’ve seen it before, don’t forget. Just go and have your
shower.”
Scarlet looked down at the
rumpled counterpane, back up at Rhapsody’s grin and her eyes, full of love,
then smiled ruefully and let the heavy cloth drop to the floor.
Eyes screwed shut against
the streams of foam from the shampoo, and ears full of water, Scarlet didn’t
hear the shower door slide open. The first indication that he was no longer
alone in the cubicle came as arms wrapped round his waist from behind, and lips
touched the side of his neck. He turned, took her in his arms and kissed her;
she pushed against his chest, pinning him against the back wall of the shower
cubicle as the warm water poured over them both…
If any memories of the dream
of death tried to come back to haunt him, he was far too pre-occupied to pay
them any attention.
This is one
of the most complicated stories I’ve ever tried to write. Attempting to match up what was going on in
Scarlet’s dreamworld with events in the “real” world almost caused me to give
up on many occasions. Many thanks to
the Usual Suspects (you know who you all are!) for encouragement along the way,
with particular thanks to Marion Woods for beta-reading and approval of the
finished story.
Disclaimer: apparently, even Gerry Anderson himself is unclear about who
currently owns the copyright for “Captain Scarlet and the Mysterons”. Possibly,
copyright still rests with itv. I’m
making no profit from this story, and intend no copyright infringement by my
use of characters, concepts and models from the series.
Hazel Köhler
OTHER CAPTAIN SCARLET
STORIES BY HAZEL KOHLER
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