Page 135 of Sky Song
At first, Cricket didn’t know what to say. “It’s illegal.”
“But what if the benefits outweigh the costs?”
“Will they ever?”
“I don’t know!” Paloma threw her hands into the air. “I’m just saying.”
“Let me tell you how the original doctor, the one from Earth, had captured and tortured a Rix alien to study him and harvest his genes against his will. The alien’s name was Simon. My mother has met him. He spent seven years in captivity, and his story is grueling.”
“I’m sorry,” Paloma hung her head. “But he’s one unfortunate individual to potentially benefit many.”
“Let’s ask him about that,” Cricket said, her throat tight and her hands all tingly. “He was the one who sent Lyle to Meeus to get his DNA back.”
Rosamma gasped. Paloma’s delicate nostrils fluttered. “You’re kidding.”
“I wish. Anyway, after Simon had liberated himself and killed the evil doctor, he didn’t destroy the lab - very short-sighted of him. The research notes and samples were smuggled from Earth to Meeus, to my hospital, where unscrupulous doctors picked up where the what’s-his-face had left off. Using Simon’s remaining genetic material, they secretly developed a new strain of the serum and administered it to an unsuspecting subject. Who died. Oops! It’s in the files, didn’t you read them?”
Paloma nodded once. “Do you know who the doctors are?”
“I do now. It’s Dr. Nura and…” her voice broke a little. “Dr. Ragberg.”
Paloma winced. “I’m sorry, Cricket.”
“So am I. He’s a great doctor. Pity it didn’t stop him from getting involved in illegal human experimentation. After their first subject died, they went back and fiddled with the serum some more, updated the formula and did it again. The new subject also died. And another one. They recruited subjects under false pretenses by lying to them about the serum’s purpose and safety. Igor, the man I replaced at work, passed away in a horrible fashion from an interaction the serum had with some other substance.”
Rosamma was wiping tears by now, holding Hipper fast to her chest. “This is so horrible. Why do people do this? Good people, doctors.”
“Greed. Desire to be famous. Who knows? Some doctors think they’re gods. I don’t know their reasoning. I don’t even know what their end goal is. You’d think that if it were noble, they wouldn't be hiding.”
“I read Igor’s name in the files,” Paloma said, subdued now. “And Kim’s.”
Cricket drew in a deep breath. “I knew she was also a subject.”
“She was being given a placebo. She’s Subject Epsilon.”
“Interesting. That explains why there was no serum listed in Epsilon’s file. What letter was Igor?”
“He was Subject Delta. It said he died from a drug interaction that he had been warned against. He had changed his mind about his participation and asked to go back to his all-human DNA. It seems that he was a massive gullible moron.”
Whatever the case might have been, Cricket felt nothing but sadness. “They probably lied to him, told him the effects were reversible.”
Paloma shook her head in disgust. “Gullible people pay the price. The doctors did warn him against experimenting on his own, but he stopped listening. He was researching stuff on the web and using off-street drugs to ‘neutralize’ the effects of the Rix genes that had been fused into his system, and died from that.”
Cricket rubbed her face as distress came and went in waves. She felt cold and hot in stages. Empty and full. Heavy and light. “This research is wrong, from its beginning to the end. Genetic materials were stolen from a tortured alien - it’s prohibited even on Earth. Here, innocent people died to prove the stupid serum was not working. God, Paloma. Were there more recent subjects?”
“No, no recent ones. Subject Zeta is the last one, and presumably, they’re alive. There was no name in the Zeta file. Should we try and find them?”
Cricket dropped her hands from her face and lifted her head. “There’s no need. I know who Subject Zeta is.”
“Who?”
She took in Paloma’s and Rosamma’s expectant expressions. “It’s me. I am Subject Zeta.”
Lyle came in late. Cricket heard him come because she lay stiff and awake in the narrow bed, staring at the ceiling she could barely see in the darkness. She thought about everything and nothing, her brain picking up thoughts and letting them go, skipping over without any deep examination of each.
Lyle’s steps were uneven.
“You’re limping,” she said into the darkness.
