Cellular Harvest

The steel needle hovered less than an inch from the skin of my throat.

"Hold her head still, Cynthia," Dr. Thorne commanded. His fingers were completely steady on the silver syringe casing. "If she twists during the initial marrow puncture, the cellular harvest will be contaminated."

Cynthia’s fingers dug deeper into my shoulders, her nails cutting through my shirt and drawing small drops of blood. Her eyes locked onto mine, a terrifying, unhinged smile spreading across her pale lips.

"Don't worry, Valerie. I will make sure your sacrifice is remembered. Every time I kill someone out there, I will think of you."

"Garrison!" I choked out, my eyes darting toward the gurney to my left.

Garrison didn't answer with words. A loud, sharp crack echoed through the surgical theater. The plastic zip ties binding his wrists behind his back didn't just slide. They snapped under the sheer force of his muscles. He had braced his heels against the lower crossbar of the gurney, using the leverage to rip his arms forward.

Before General Vance could even raise the remote, Garrison launched himself off the table.

His shoulder slammed directly into his father's chest, throwing the old man backward into a rack of glass chemical jars. The shelves shattered with a deafening crash, showering the floor in clear shards and green fluids. The General shrieked, his grip slipping from the remote as it skittered across the white-tiled floor.

"Thorne, behind you!" Cynthia screamed, her attention snapping away from me for a fraction of a second.

That split second was all I needed. I pulled my right leg back and kicked upward with all my might, striking Cynthia directly in her reconstructed chest. The impact felt like hitting a solid brick wall, but the surprise of the strike made her lose her balance. Her grip slipped from my shoulders as she stumbled backward into the extraction machine.

The automated needle in Thorne’s hand swung wide, grazing the side of my neck but missing the vein completely.

Garrison was already on his feet, reaching down to scoop up his knife from the floor where Cynthia had thrown it earlier. He didn't look at his father, who was groaning among the broken glass. He lunged straight at Thorne, his arm moving in a swift horizontal arc.

Thorne dropped the silver syringe, scrambling backward toward the automated security console.

"Drones! Code black! Fire at will!"

The two quadcopters hovering near the ceiling immediately swiveled their twin-linked barrels downward. The bright red laser sights painted Garrison's chest, the internal gears whining as they initialized the firing sequence.

"Get down!" I yelled, throwing myself off the surgical table and rolling beneath the stainless steel structure.

Garrison didn't try to dodge. He grabbed the metal tray table next to his gurney, lifting it with both hands like a shield just as the drones opened fire.

A barrage of high-caliber rounds shredded the metal tray, the sound deafening inside the small concrete room. Sparks showered the floor as Garrison charged through the gunfire, slamming the ruined tray directly into the first drone. The quadcopter crumpled against the wall, its lithium battery exploding in a bright flash of blue flame.

The second drone adjusted its aim, tracking Garrison's head, but I reached out from beneath my table and grabbed the discarded remote from the floor. I didn't know the military frequencies, but I smashed my palm down on the red emergency override button.

The second drone froze in mid-air, its laser sight blinking erratically before its rotors died completely, sending it crashing to the tiles.

"Cynthia, kill them!" General Vance roared from the floor, his face bleeding from a dozen small glass cuts. "Do your job, you ungrateful brat!"

Cynthia hissed, the veins on her face turning completely black as she launched herself at Garrison's back. Her movements were too fast for a normal human to track. She caught him by the shoulder, her fingers sinking through his armored vest, and threw him across the room into the primary glass viewing wall.

The safety glass shattered into a million spiderweb fractures, but it didn't break completely. Garrison hit the floor hard, his knife slipping from his fingers.

"You are weak, Garrison," Cynthia laughed, walking slowly toward him as the black fluid from her chest wounds sizzled against the air. "You are just a man. I am the apex."

Suddenly, the primary laboratory doors at the far end of the corridor blasted inward with an explosive boom.