What an asshole…
Delgado presses a couple of times the button to call back the elevator, watching the red LED display switching from two to three. Whoever it was, he headed to the third floor, the deeper one.
Why such a hurry?
The harmonious silhouette of the woman contrasts with the white surface of the sliding doors while waiting for the cabin to come back to her floor. After a moment a hissing sound tells her that the elevator is moving again. Anyway, it doesn’t stop at her floor, the cabin proceeds upwards, keeping moving in front of her eyes. Constantine feels impatient, and presses the call button again, wondering what criteria they used to program the elevator’s stopping priorities.
How was that old saying: the other queue always goes faster…
A distant rustling, mixed with the sound of several quick steps, makes her turn around.
A group of soldiers pops out of the curve of the corridor. Everyone is wearing bio-hazard suits, like the man who was in the elevator a few seconds earlier, although these ones carry assault rifles.
It must be the team that arrived with the jet along with the two civilians…
The woman turns to the elevator, which is slow in coming, as the footsteps of the soldiers behind her get closer, finally stopping just behind her.
She already had a chance to take a glimpse of the newcomers. Taciturn individuals, with dark and gloomy looks. People who lived in hellish situations, losing each time a part of their humanity. They are only five now, and Constantine doesn’t remember having seen the others around, after their arrival.
They may be somewhere else in the area…
Or maybe the others are in the armory, on the third basement, where that other has just gone…
They probably split into two teams that operate in shifts…
Even if… they don’t have the look of people used to things like working hours…
How long does it take to get here?
She doesn’t like too much the idea of having those G.I. Joe behind her. Not a gesture, not a greeting, and she is aware of their eyes x-raying her from head to toes behind their darkened visors. She takes a sip of coffee, to dampen the waiting, focusing on its taste.
A beep signals the arrival at the floor. The elevator opens slowly and, with relief, Constantine steps forward to enter.
The woman has just made a step when a figure comes out of the cabin, bumping violently on her and making her spill the coffee on the ground.
What the fuck?!?
The man clings with one hand to her shoulder, leaning with his weight and pushing her off balance. Delgado reacts instinctively, putting her feet down and balancing her legs to support the weight of the man.
She looks at him, recognizing him as Desmond Majo, a black giant from Detroit, one of the two soldiers that were guarding the Berber boy found near the crash site.
“Help me Delgado!”, he whispers, almost gasping, turning to the woman he has clung with one hand. He tightens his abdomen.
She supports him, experiencing a feeling of moist heat on one hand. Delgado turns to the soldiers behind her. These have taken a step back, raising their guns. “What the hell are you looking at? Give me a hand!”
The soldiers don’t move, merely pointing assault rifles at the woman and the man who exited the elevator.
“He is wounded! Shit, what’s up with you?!?” She blurts.
At a gesture from one of the soldiers, two of them drop their guns and approach to help the man. Delgado steps away, looking at her bloody hands. She feels a persisting heat. Her palms burn, as if she has just touched something very hot for too long. “Let’s get him to the infirmary”, she exclaims, leading the soldiers to a door, just past the corner of the corridor.
The soldiers carry the wounded man. They quickly follow Delgado and put down the soldier on a stretcher, then hurry to leave the infirmary stepping outside with their weapons ready. Inside there is only one of them left: their leader.
Meanwhile the woman tries to clean her hands as best as she can on a big roll of paper towels. Disappointed by the inexplicable behavior of the team of soldiers, she promises herself to report to Redmond about this. Then she turns to provide assistance to the injured man.
“Desmond, what happened?”, asks the woman, while rummaging in a locker to retrieve a first aid kit.
“I don’t know, I don’t fucking know. Aah!”
“Hold still, here… Rest your head here. Leave it to me now, I got it.”
The man tells what happened with delirious voice interrupted occasionally by strained verses.
“That little bastard broke the handcuffs and stood up. He pulled off his hood and approached the observation glass. He was standing there, motionless staring at us for I don’t know how long. No eyelid beating and it seemed he was not breathing either. Then… suddenly he started to shiver… to slam… Something…”, says the injured soldier in one breath, while grimacing in pain. “Something popped out of that guy… It broke through the glass grabbing Syd.”
Man coughs, spitting a lump of bloody mucus. His voice sounds hoarse as he goes on. “I tried to help him, but that… that…”. Another coughing, while the man crouches moaning, seized by violent spasms. “I don’t know what the hell it was but it was weird and pissed off! It hit me! That son of a bitch hit me!”
Hearing those words, the soldier leading the squad of military in bio-hazard suits turns and walks out to join the team. The group of soldiers walks away, heading quickly toward the elevator.
Delgado stays with Majo. The man rests on the stretcher and seems to have lost consciousness.
She takes a sharp scissors, and quickly cuts the uniform of the wounded man to access his skin.
Disgust draws on her face, while looking at a deep laceration with jagged edges that pierces the abdomen of the man just on the left of his navel, going up to the right side of the chest.
Trying to ignore the burning feeling that still grips her hands, Delgado takes a bottle of disinfectant, pouring enough on the wound. The man’s skin contracts when the liquid touches it. A soft gurgling sounds inside.
Without noticing it, the woman hastes to prepare the necessary to suture the wound. Her fingers have lost all feeling.
After a number of unsuccessful attempts, everything is ready to fix Majo’s abdomen. Using a sterile gauze, the woman tries to lift one of the edges of the wound, to align them before suturing.
However, a movement catches her eye.
Something pale stirs for a moment inside the wound, like a muscle that contracts due to a spasm.
The woman slowly and gently rests her hands on the wound’s edges, enlarging them just enough to expose the underlying tissue. Stifling her disgust she observes what looks like a tiny whitish sphere, no bigger than a golf ball. The surface is clear and translucent, and she can see something moving fluttering inside.
Under the astonished gaze of Delgado, thin capillaries draw on the bulbous surface, while a darker area seems to move up, surfacing from the inside and taking shape on the top. The wonder quickly gives way to horror when she realizes that the strange globular mass is rapidly taking the shape of a human eye.
Unable to formulate a thought, Constantine observes the appearance of an iris pigmentation with a greenish color gradient. Shortly thereafter a pupil emerges, small at first, then quickly expanding to fill almost the entire iris. Then it narrows as disturbed by the light. Then the body of the eye is complete and comes to life, moving quickly as if to scan at the environment around it.