Page 63 of Monstrous Baby
A faint, hazy blue light flickered in the corners of my vision. The air shimmered slightly like heat rising from a fire. The jump ring’s edge.
An arm locked around my throat. Something hard jammed into my ribs. I gasped, my eyes flying open, losing the vision. He jerked me backward, away from Snryx and Lohr.
“This has been extremely entertaining.” Dr. Snyder’s face pressed close enough to my ear that I could feel his breath on my cheek. “But all fun and games must end eventually.”
Released from all DSC programming and constraints, Lohr shifted to his Nodo form, his long fangs glistening.
Snyder jerked me back another step. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you, XNT. You know what I have pressed to your frail human’s body. It’ll be interesting to see if she can withstand the pain of losing all of those lovely Sirian cells now that they’re fully integrated into her biological systems.”
Damn. One of those extractor pens. But where’d he get it?
Furious tears burned my eyes, but I wasn’t going to give him the pleasure of watching me cry. “I should have let Axxol eat you when he had the chance.”
“You were supposed to be the smart one, remember?” Snyder laughed, squeezing my throat so hard I could barely breathe. “Maximus.”
The agent’s jovial face shifted to pure silver. “Override accepted. Awaiting new orders.”
“Wipe all logs and evidence of this incident,” Dr. Snyder said.
“Completed.”
“You’re dismissed.”
The agent melted into a puddle like mercury and disappeared into the smooth silver floor.
“You’re one of them,” I wheezed out.
But how? I knew the man. I’d taken regular classes with him over the years, both undergraduate and graduate studies. He’d published numerous articles in his tenured career at the University of Texas. Why would DSC bother masquerading as a human college professor for more than a decade? Unless a few years were nothing more than the blink of an eye to them.
“Not all the time,” he replied. “Sometimes Dr. Snyder lives his own meaningless, mundane human life with only very basic and boring programming required. But when he travels in the field, especially in South or Central America, then I take over for a little fun.”
Your backward planet has been a sort of playground for millennia.
I could suddenly see it all so clearly. His skeevy reputation for always takingfemalestudents into the field. Many of them left the archeology program—or simply dropped out entirely for one excuse or another. How many hadn’t even come back? How many had met some scary monster in the jungle that simply ate them?
Over and over and over.
He didn’t care. He had no empathy. No basic compassion.
He’d left me in the tent with the mercenary soldier, fully intending for me to disappear. Fuck, that seemed like a lifetime ago. Had that been the man programmed to pretend to be human? Or the DSC agent?
:He’s not an agent,:Snryx warned.:Not like the other one. He’s very real, though his consciousness is only projected into this human body.:
“Let us out of here,” General Waverley demanded. “Now. We have to stop the Kore before it’s too late.”
“Oh, no, I don’t think so,” Dr. Snyder replied. “I can’t allow you to deploy the gift the syndicate kindly presented to you. They have different priorities than I do.”
Mr. Smith backed away from Snyder, shifting the briefcase behind him. “We had a deal.”
“Not with me. Trust me, I’m doing you a favor.”
“Don’t trust,” I wheezed out, using my fingers to try and pry at his arm locked around my windpipe. “Never.”
“Oh, I assure you in this case you want to listen to me. In that briefcase, gentlemen, you hold a Sirian crystal large enough to detonate this entire planet if it comes into contact with the KORE.”
:It’s true,:Lohr said.:KORE are the antithesis of DSC technology, which is powered by Sirian crystals. It’d create a reaction like antimatter colliding with matter.:
Black spots danced in my vision, and my knees trembled.We’re running out of time. :I don’t understand.:
