This choice: Possess Dr. Jillian Harding • Go Back...Chapter #5Possess Dr. Jillian Harding by: Seuzz   Without telling the colonel where you are going, you quickly exit and walk over to Building A-6. Dr. Harding's makeshift office is hidden in a labyrinth in the back, and it takes you awhile to find it. The professor is remarkably young and cute, and though she is obviously tired, she looks up at you from her computer station with a bright-eyed expression. "Long hours for you too, captain?" she says.
With no more prologue than a tight smile, you bend over her, press your face to hers, and blort yourself all over her. There's a lot of desperate confusion before you regain a sense of a body, and when you do you are looking down at the unconscious captain and breathing heavily.
Quickly you get up and fetch some water to rouse him. He is as groggy and confused as Liebrecht had been when you left him. You coo and cluck over him with concern for a few moments; he mutters apologies which you brush aside. Then with the excuse that he's not been feeling well all evening, he leaves.
After he's gone you turn to look at the professor's computer monitor. Many programs, none of which you understand, are running. With a little mental digging you are able to recognize one of them as a simulation that models formula SX-2, but it is far too taxing trying to figure out what it is doing. It's late, and there's a cot in the corner, so with a sigh you turn down all the lights, put the computer to sleep, and stretch out on it.
* * * * *
You, of course, were awake the entire night, exploring and digesting Jillian Harding's mindscape, but she herself is woken early the next morning by a gentle shake to the shoulders. You emerge inside her body as she sits up. "It's nice to see that you sometimes sleep," a wry voice says.
"I suppose you don't, colonel," you grumble good-naturedly. You rub the sleep from her eyes and then smile at Lord. "Oh, you've got coffee going."
"Breakfast, too." He offers you a pastry. "It's going to be a long day."
"Oh? Did your boys find anything in the state park?"
"No. It would have been remarkable if they had. But the animal specimens are here."
"Quick work," you mumble around the Danish. "Are they over in the other building?" He nods. "I'll take a glance at them on my way to the showers."
"Sanchez says he was over here last night," the colonel says noncommittally as you sip at some coffee.
"Mm-hmm. It was very odd," you reply. "He came in here and then just fainted."
"We had a man in the office earlier who did the same thing."
"A bug going around?"
"You don't believe that, do you?"
You shrug. "A lot of stuff got pumped into the air during the fire. It wouldn't be a bad idea to keep an eye out for further fainting attacks. How's the other man? How's Eric?"
"They both seem to be fine. But we're keeping them under observation."
"Are you feeling alright, colonel?"
"I think so."
"Good. Well, let's go see those test subjects."
* * * * *
The day is packed. The sun has barely come up when you step outside, and it's well past midnight before you are even able to think about putting Harding back to bed. But it is very fruitful.
Your time inside her during the night has given you full and easy access to everything she knows. Better still, you are able to run at her own native intellectual speed, and the ease with which you are able to make deductions and glimpse possibilities is intoxicating. Everything Harding has written makes perfect sense to you, and with your own knowledge of what SX-2 has done to you, you are able to make some inferences that would have taken the professor much longer on her own.
To put it briefly: the SX-2, which was designed as an explosive fixative, interacted with and reorganized your tissues to create the gelatinous mess that you currently are. The goo, despite its apparent physical simplicity, is actually quite complex, and somehow is able to recapitulate the neuro-physical information from your original body: this is why you still have memories and willpower. Meanwhile, it can bond with the neurological systems of any hosts it moves into—which is how you get information from the host's mind and are able to run its body—and feeds on their neuro-chemical energy.
You are able to glean most of these discoveries from the animal specimens that Colonel Lord has acquired. During the day you expose a number of mice to samples of SX-2, turning them into blue gelatin that you can study closely. All of these experiments are monitored by the colonel and one or two technicians, and all are recorded on video cameras. But though you learn a great deal, you don't share more than a fraction of what you've figured out with the colonel. So far as he knows, you've simply discovered that exposure to the compound changes the animals without killing them outright.
Only once do you come close to making a dangerous disclosure, when it is suggested that one of the reduced animals be exposed to an unchanged specimen. You can't come up with a plausible reason to keep the residue separate from a test subject, and watch with disguised unhappiness as the residue of a reduced rabbit disappears into the body of a snake that has cornered it in its glass case. The snake quickly becomes immobile, and then starts twitching in an odd fashion. Before anyone can watch its behavior any more closely, you have the snake removed and killed; the goo dribbles out and tries scuttling away before it is captured and returned to a stoppered bottle. Fortunately, you are able to dismiss the snake's performance as just an oddity that comes from having the goo "lodged" inside its respiratory tract, even though you yourself are pretty sure that the rabbit had "possessed" the reptile.
* * * * *
The next week passes in much the same way, with days filled with experiments, simulations, and calculations. Most of what you think you need to know about yourself you learn on Sunday and Monday; you fill the rest by creating intentional dead ends and false trails and fake data that you can leave behind when you think it's safe to exit Dr. Harding. You also keep quietly alert to any news of the hunt for "David Johnson" and the investigation of Caleb Ryerson. The former, of course, has disappeared without a trace; the latter, meanwhile, looks likely to get off with a misdemeanor trespassing charge.
By the time Friday rolls around you think you've got a good exit strategy set up. During the week you discovered a chemical compound that when injected into a "residue" causes its slow decay and dissolution. It unsettles you to know that there are ways of killing you, and you are careful to leave no traces of the formula in the professor's notes or even inside her head. You are also careful not to be caught when you inject it into all the residue specimens. By Friday morning all of your residues have turned into (or are in the process of turning into) damp and acrid-smelling stains on the bottoms of their bottles, and the colonel is convinced when you use these stains and some fancy jargon to theorize that the residues are unstable, and that the Johnson residue has long since dissolved into nothingness in the wilderness. SX-2 is reclassified as a highly dangerous substance; it cannot be used in any manufacturing processes, and there are treaties that would prevent its being used in anti-personnel weapons. You affect a (genuine) lack of concern when the colonel regretfully informs you that Harding's project is being shelved and the remaining SX-2 destroyed.
So you're in a chipper mood on Friday afternoon when you look up to see Lieutenant Claire Briggs, a good friend, smiling at you from the doorway. "How long has it been since you've been home, Jillian?" she asks.
"Oh, golly. Wednesday? I had to talk to my brother about mother and her nursing home."
"Well, at least you've seen some daylight. But what about some nightlife?"
Your heart leaps. "What did you have in mind?"
"El Rodeo?"
"I am there. Lord's taking tomorrow off anyway."
"I'll pick you up at seven."
You spend the next few hours burning off dozens of CDs with data and purging some of the more damaging notes from Harding's workstation. At five you are on your way to her place, where you take a nice long bath and get ready for some bar hopping. Jillian is short and a little on the plump side; her wardrobe is also fairly conservative. But you do yourself up nice and twinkle at the cute thirty-two-year-old who looks back at you from the mirror when you're done.
* * * * *
El Rodeo is already buzzing with a large crowd when you and Claire arrive. You each get a cocktail from the bar and settle in at a small booth that lets you look out over the dance floor at the patrons. There are a lot of buzz cuts; El Rodeo is popular with the base men.
"Isn't that your bodyguard over there?" Claire tries to whisper, but has to shout over the music into your ear.
You look over to where she is gesturing. Sure enough, it's Ed Zander, one of the corporals who has regular guard duties outside Building A-6. He's a nice-looking fellow and seems to be sweet on Jillian. He is always smiling when he sees her, and drawling deep-fried, Alabama-style compliments when she passes. Now, he grins and gives a playful little salute to you from across the room.
"You could really get in trouble with a guy like him," Claire observes mischievously.
"I'm sure he is worth getting to know better," you allow. A quick exit from Fort Suffolk might be a bad idea; maybe it would be better to possess Zander and keep a quiet eye on things for a little while, just make sure the whole crisis has passed.
"You're not scoping you an enlisted man, are you?" a deep voice says behind you.
"Mark!" you exclaim after turning your head. "Well this is a nice surprise!" It's Mark Taylor, your own next-door neighbor, leaning over and grinning at you.
"I'd think you'd have enough opportunity to check out jarheads and related specimens during the day," he says, continuing to tease as he sits down next to you.
"I don't get out of the office enough to do that," you reply. "And tonight's my first night off since I don't remember."
"Keeping you busy are they? How's your research going?"
"Dead end, I'm afraid. They cancelled it this afternoon."
"I'm sorry to hear that. I hope this isn't a wake."
"No, actually I'm kind of happy. I don't think it was going anywhere anyway. I can start on something new now."
"Well, remember there's always room for you at Protean." That's the company Mark works for.
"Mmm. You know, you've mentioned that in the past, and I've never taken it seriously. But I am in the market for a big change. What are you working on?"
He grins. "It's classified at the moment. But I've got some design specs back at my house I could show you. Privately, if you catch my drift."
"Funny you should say that. I've got something private I wouldn't mind showing you."
You look into each other's eyes for quite a while, grinning madly. Mark is looking very handsome in his dark t-shirt and black Levis. Jillian knows that Taylor, though not as brilliant as she is, is extremely capable. You've been worried about what would happen to your own brain power after giving up Harding; Mark would make a decent substitute, and he lives next door to your own family.   indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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