The Lasaran (Aldebarian Alliance #1) - Dianne Duvall Page 0,24
to the front,” the vampire called over the soldiers’ screams. One soldier collapsed. A second did the same.
“Wh-Which way is the front?” she asked.
Dropping the last soldier, he frowned and pointed. “That way.”
Gunshots echoed up the hallway, so loud it hurt her ears.
The vampire grunted as blood spurted from his chest, spattering Lisa.
His face twisting in a snarl, he again shot away in a blur and reappeared at the opposite end of the corridor. Lisa fought down more terror as he slew two more soldiers in green, then grabbed the third.
Nausea rose. Her shoulder pressed to the wall, she backed away. Her shoe caught on something that gave a little. But she didn’t look down, knowing it was another body. Deep inside, she fought the urge to scream. After identifying her father’s body, she had hoped to never see another dead person again. Now Brad’s blood was on her hands and more bodies lay all around her.
When she reached the end of the hallway, she paused. The corridor that intersected this one was Jackson Pollocked with blood. The vampire had said she should go left to reach the front.
Instead, Lisa turned to the right. Somewhere in the back lay the biohazard section. Inside it she would find the thing that had fathered her baby. Once she saw it… Once she knew…
Only then would she leave and try to secure Taelon’s release.
Taelon drew in a ragged breath. The day’s torture was at last coming to an end. One of the half dozen so-called scientists gathered around him had mentioned calling it a day. And all were still so distracted that they had forgotten to dose him again.
He prodded their sickening minds for information on Amiriska but had trouble accessing their thoughts. Was his telepathy still impaired?
If so, why was he able to communicate with Lisa with such ease?
Wonk! Wonk! Wonk!
Taelon jerked in surprise as an alarm blared. Pain knifed through him.
The butchers all jumped and looked at each other for several startled seconds. Then they sprang into action, bumping into each other in their hurry. One rushed to finish labeling the tissue samples they had taken. Impatiently tossing her gloves aside, she scribbled on white stickers with shaking fingers and slapped them onto the sealed tubes. Two others began haphazardly closing his chest, piercing him with needles and doing a real shit job of it as Earthlings would say. Another shoved contaminated instruments into a packet to be cleaned and sterilized later. The last two headed for the door and began yanking off their white protective suits before they even reached it, something he had never seen them do before. Usually they were very careful never to expose themselves to whatever harmful bacteria or viruses they feared he might carry.
All spoke at once, overlapping each other and nearly drowning out the alarm.
“Do you think it’s her?”
“—must be time.”
“—wouldn’t sound the alarm for that.”
“—she’s escaping?”
“No way in hell—”
“—couldn’t if she tried…”
“Not in her condition…”
Were they talking about Lisa? What did they mean by her condition? What had they done to her?
“—think it’s the vampires?”
Taelon didn’t know what that word meant. When he tried to discover the meaning of it by peering into the speaker’s thoughts, pain shot through his head and he barely managed to catch a flash of a man with glowing eyes and long, sharp canine teeth.
“—too heavily sedated to—”
“—think it’s more aliens coming for this one?”
All talk ceased as the four who remained shared frightened looks.
“NORAD would’ve picked them up on radar and warned us if it was aliens,” one murmured, uncertainty painting the features behind his mask.
The fools. Did they really believe his people would give them warning before they struck? Or that Earth’s primitive instruments could detect and track his people’s ships if the men or women piloting those ships wished to remain hidden?
More conversation erupted, so garbled he couldn’t latch onto anything solid.
A voice squawked over a speaker but was almost instantly cut off by a gurgling cry.
Eyes wide, faces pale, the butchers abandoned all thoughts of labeling, refrigerating, sterilizing, or stitching and raced for the doorway, pushing and shoving each other in their quest to evacuate first.
Footsteps faded beneath the alarm. Occasional popping sounds carried to him.
Once he was alone, Taelon peered up at the glass panel above the door. The seats up in the observation room were empty. Those who sometimes came to watch his torment were thankfully absent.
At last. He allowed himself a small, triumphant smile. Because the simpletons had forgotten to dose