Dropping to her stomach, she reached for the closest ceiling tile and lifted it up just enough to study the room beneath her.
It was occupied. A woman was lying on an examination table, just as Dalia had been only minutes before.
She didn’t have time to be picky.
Rolling off the catwalk, she dropped through the ceiling, landing in a half crouch on the floor. Startled, the woman sat up, opening her mouth to scream. Dalia leapt at her, covering the woman’s mouth with one hand and pinching the woman’s carotid artery with the other. The moment the woman’s eyes rolled back in her head, Dalia released her and looked around, absently checking the woman’s pulse to make certain she hadn’t killed her.
This room had both a window and a door. She moved to the window first, pulled the window covering aside and looked out. She was on the sixtieth floor, about half way up the building, more or less. The outside of the building was as smooth as glass. Windows broke the monotony every ten feet or so, but most likely every one of them was fixed just as this one was and could not be opened and was probably nearly as impossible to break.
She couldn’t fly, so that was out.
There was no point in trying to go down. They would be waiting for her. Up would only work if there were crafts on the roof.
It was a med lab. There were probably a half a dozen or more on the roof at any time.
There was one slight problem.
She didn’t have a stitch of clothing on and that was bound to draw attention. Shrugging, she helped herself to the tunic and trousers the woman had been wearing. They were too big, but it wouldn’t be nearly as noticeable as being naked. The woman’s shoes were too big, too. It was too risky to wear them, she decided. They would slow her down at the very least. At worst, the shoes could trip her if she needed to run. She slipped the stockings on to cover her bare feet and make them less noticeable, then moved to the door, opening it a crack.
No one seemed terribly excited. She saw a couple of techs strolling along one end of the corridor, notepads in hand. There was a knot of them at one end of the corridor, waiting, she realized, for an elevator or having just gotten off one.
Obviously, security still thought they had the ‘danger’ contained on the other side of the firewall that ran down the building.
Stepping from the room, she walked casually toward the row of elevators and punched the button that would summon one going up. As she stood waiting, several more people joined her, staring up at the display panel above the doors. Turning her head just enough she could examine each of them in her peripheral vision, she relaxed fractionally. There was no sign of security guards ... yet.
Impatience began to gnaw at her. She’d just decided to find the stairs and take them up several flights when the bells on three of the elevators dinged, announcing the arrival of the cubicles. Having already turned away and taken a step down the corridor toward the sign marked ‘exit’, she glanced inside the elevator she’d been standing in front of as the doors slowly began to open.
It was packed with guards ...and the one in front was holding a tracker. He glanced up as she strode away, his eyes locking on her for about two seconds. Shoving anyone aside who lay in her path, she broke into a run as she heard the guards launch themselves against the opening doors, trying to squeeze through all at once and succeeding only in bottlenecking the exit.
The doors on the fourth elevator had already begun to close as she reached it. She leapt through the rapidly narrowing opening. The timing was perfect. She’d barely landed inside when the doors slammed closed. Her last view of the corridor, however, had been of the guards charging the elevator.
They’d spotted her. They would reroute it, she knew.
Ignoring the gasps and protests of the four people already in the elevator when she’d jumped in, she moved to the control panel, studied it a moment and finally speared her fingers through the holes drilled for the buttons, grasped the panel firmly and pulled it out of the wall, exposing the circuits. Almost simultaneously, the elevator lights blinked and the cubicle ground to a halt.
They’d already tied in.
Glancing over the circuits, she saw immediately that there was no way to rewire it. She grasped the panel and wrenched it out, tossing it to one side and evoking a round of screams from the women in the group. Grasping the main feed, she pulled on the wire until she had enough to reach, then stripped the insulation from the end, felt behind her head until she found the jack and plugged directly into the computer.
It took thirty seconds to override their override, and another five to lock them out. As the elevator jolted into motion again, Dalia examined the database and found that there were four crafts on the roof, fueled and prepped to go. One of the elevators was already on the roof. The other two were on the ground level and the tenth floor.
She was about to log out when it occurred to her that now was her opportunity to discover what the computer knew about her situation. The CPU inside her brain began displaying images before her eyes almost instantly.
Gestation was an archaic form of reproduction that had been practiced by the human race until the last century. The fertilized ovum attached itself inside the female’s body, within a cavity known as the womb, and lived off of the female’s body until it reached a state of maturity that would allow it to survive on its own.
Dalia frowned. How is the parasite introduced into the host to begin with?
Male and female each carried an element, the female an egg or ovum, which contained the DNA of the female host. The male donor provided sperm, which contained the male’s DNA and would activate the egg and set off a chain reaction. The male would deliver his DNA via sexual intercourse.
Dalia mulled that over for a moment. She hadn’t engaged in sex, at all. It was prohibited by the company to anyone in her position, an infraction punishable by termination. She’d always assumed they meant termination of employment, however.In the event that the female did not have sexual intercourse with a male, was there another method of delivery? Or was it possible for the female to manipulate the ovum herself and induce it to begin to replicate cells?
This method of reproduction was imprecise. Often the female would become impregnated when reproduction was infeasible or undesirable due to economic, health or social conditions. Occasionally, the male or female who wished to reproduce would be found to be infertile. If the male was infertile, and unable to provide his DNA, a donor would be found who was a desirable substitute and his DNA would be introduced into the female via medical procedure.
It still didn’t make any sense to her. They’d impregnated her and now had decided to terminate both her and the pregnancy? She shook it off. She didn’t have time to study it now.Status?
Passing the 100thfloor.
Locate the guards for me.
