The Key to Fear - Kristin Cast Page 0,32
as she took a step back.
“I was close, Sparkman. This close.” Normandy held up two fingers, separated only enough for a breath to pass through. “Perhaps if the patient is younger next time.” He rubbed the earpieces of his glasses. “Ninety-Two was four when we started and lasted longer than any before her. Yes,” he mused. “Age …” With the corner of his coat he rubbed small circles across his lenses. “We shall search for another suitable child. A male this time, perhaps.”
Sparkman pursed her lips and nodded sharply. “You’re the boss.”
Normandy slid his glasses up his nose, glanced at Ninety-Two’s ghostly pale frame, and smiled.
Aiden might end up being happy in the lab. Well, not happy necessarily, but content. No. No, not content either. Maybe fine was the right word. He blew out a puff of air and weighed the innocuous adjective. Yes, he could end up being very fine with a career in one of the many End-of-Life Unit labs, or anywhere else in the ELU that kept him out of Cold Storage or the incineration unit. Tavi hadn’t taken him there yet, but they’d walked by and Aiden could imagine what fresh hell waited behind the shiny steel doors.
The lab, or at least the section of it in which he and Tavi currently worked, was free of dead people, or anything else he might need his orange garbage bag of a biocontainment suit to protect him from. Tavi still hadn’t allowed him to take it off. Aiden was sure it was some sort of punishment for him acting like, well, himself.
Even though the lab was better than where he’d been before, there was no escaping the brilliant white light, so searing that it could disinfect every surface of the ELU without the help of the Violet Shield. Also, the glass walls made it a bit terrariumesque. On the bright side (pun intended), Aiden didn’t have to do much as far as work was concerned. But greater than that was the fact that he could see straight into the no-nonsense science section of the laboratory, and, if he positioned himself just right, he could catch images displayed on the floor-to-ceiling holoscreen. People way smarter than he was took turns pointing at the images, looking in their fancy microscopes, and shuffling about in their orange biosuits like shriveled squash. It was wishful thinking, but maybe Tavi would decide that he didn’t need to learn anything about any of the other sections of the ELU and could stay here indefinitely.
He adjusted the tight ring of rubber around his gloved wrist, snapping it for added effect before scooping up another tray of petri dishes and spilling them onto the waist-high metal table.
Aiden grabbed a few dishes and began stacking them on the table the way Tavi had instructed. His foot cramped from hours of standing in the same position. Maybe he could come up with another excuse to take a break. As long as he was throwing out possibilities, maybe he’d even see that wet-haired nurse out in the hall again.
Aiden leaned his hips against the table.
Now that was wishful thinking.
“Oh, Gods,” Tavi said, “not like that. Like this.” Propped up on a metal stool, she stacked her set of Petri dishes from biggest to smallest and pushed them to the edge of the spotless steel table. A bot motored up, scooped up the dishes, and puttered through the doorway’s Violet Shield. “They won’t come get them if the sensor doesn’t relay that they’re stacked correctly,” she said.
Aiden understood that. He also understood how to stack round items from largest to smallest. But currently, he was having a hard time focusing on anything except the Long-Term Care Unit nurse who’d been searching for the medi-pump lab, her round lips, and the way she pinned her gaze to the floor as if afraid that if she ignored its existence for too long, she would take flight and lose it forever.
And they’d had something in common. Showers. A strange thing to have in common, sure, but a commonality nonetheless. And there were shadows there, secrets. Aiden had gotten good at spotting secrets, and hers flickered in the depths of her black eyes. Intrigue swirled around him, clawing ribbons of curiosity down his back.
But had he really asked her if she took water baths? Shit. That was creepy. He was lucky she hadn’t run away shouting for security. Maybe the weirdness of the ELU was already starting to rub off on him.
“And you don’t