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Viper and the Mandrill
JUNE...YEAR 5
“I can’t believe I’m doing this,” Owen muttered, taking the syringe from Dr Carpenter. “Especially after the problems you had trying to get a sample out of her in the first bloody place.”
Viper, however, held still for the injection. “I want this to work more than you do, boy,” she spat. “You’ll only lose a lover; I’ll lose my chance.”
Owen located a vein quickly enough and injected the antidote into her bloodstream. “How long before we’ll know if it’s worked?”
“Another blood sample in about half an hour should tell us - if the metabolite is present in a smaller quantity. The original substance, well… I’d need more data. I don’t have anything by which I can tell it’s natural rate of decay in the blood, not from Viper. If you’d managed to rescue your partner, only recently introduced, I’d have some chance of being able to tell how much… the average level of pheromone intake, which I think we’ve got in our databases somewhere, and the level in the bloodstream at the time of taking the sample… But Viper’s been hooked on it for too long. I don’t think we can assume anything normal about the Mandrill’s pheromones over time.”*
“So all we can do for now is wait?”
“Indeed.”
The Mandrill walked over to the benches at which the biochemists laboured, and selected one of the women to ask his question. It was his way of ensuring a truthful answer.
“How long until the project is complete, do you think?”
She turned to look at him with the adoration he felt was simply his rightful due. “We should have a 90% accurate breakdown of your pheromones for synthesis in another five hours, my lord,” she said, and stifled a yawn.
The mutant before her considered the possibility that the round-the-clock work was tiring them too greatly to make their results worthwhile, but quickly dismissed it. In any case, even if he ordered them to sleep, they’d wake early and resume almost as tired… and with hours lost that might prove costly, with the authorities notified.
He smiled, his apelike lips twisting as they did when he tried to mirror human facial expressions - but he rather liked the impression that cast.
“Excellent, my dear. Keep up the good work, then.”
He turned away and resumed his pacing. This, of course, was the trouble with scientific endeavour - it consumed time, and left villains like himself with nothing to do until the results were in. He wondered a little, however, at how effective a 90% accurate derivation of his pheromones would be. What would it lack? What, indeed, was the crucial factor that made his pheromones so effective?*
The sample was drained from the syringe into whatever it was pharmacologists used for analysis - not for the first time, Owen found himself wishing he had a little more background knowledge about other disciplines. But if you wanted to know your way around nanotechnology, it had a way of consuming your life.
He waited impatiently, on the edge of his seat, before realising what he had still to do. He wheeled around and began working at one of the computer terminals.
“Bodyweight, what are you doing?” Carpenter asked mildly.
“I’m trying to work out how many doses we’re going to need. There were two WPCs in there, but I don’t think there were any females in the attack force-“
“No,” Viper confirmed. “There was a reason for that, too. I didn’t want anyone loyal to him figuring out what I was trying to do.”
“Right. But there are women in the biochem research team, and they’re going to need doses. So we’ll need however many women were in there, plus three. Preferably in a dart gun-“
“Why would we have a dart gun in a research complex?”
“-or in separate syringes, in which case we’re going to have to move fairly fast.”
“We’re going to have to move fast anyway,” Viper cut in, “or you will, because my men are still likely to shoot you. I’ll have to move fast because the Mandrill fan club is going to be all over us.”
“Oh, good.” Owen paused for a moment, in order to convince himself that all that had sunk in. It hadn’t, not really. Then he got back to work at the computer bank.
“Right,” he said. “We’re gonna need a total of twelve doses. Good job the team as a whole was so small, I guess. And at least the WPCs aren’t going to join in the firefight.”
Carpenter smiled faintly at that, and then his face really lit up. “Eureka!”
“Sorry?”
“Well, as I said, I can’t promise there will be no side-effects, but in a case like this, where leaving it could well be deleterious too… Well, the metabolites are almost gone. The enzymes the body uses are subsiding. And I can’t find so much as a trace of the original substance.”
Viper nodded to herself. “Good. Give me another shot of that, would you?”
“What for?”
“Just to make sure there’s enough stuff floating round my system to stop him infecting me again.”
“…Right.”
“That’s a point,” Owen said. “I’ll try to get the research staff evacuated as soon as they get their shots, but… Better make it thirteen doses. In fact…” He smiled to himself. “No, let’s say fourteen. I’ve got an idea I’d like to try. And, Dr Carpenter? I’d make sure I had a copy of that formula on me, if I were you. I’m sure the superteams and the Vault would love an anti-Mandrill shot.”
Dr Carpenter smiled and nodded. “Oh, any money from it is going back into the complex,” he said. “After all, I did all this using their facilities, and I think I owe it a debt of gratitude for giving me a puzzle like this one."
“Where’s Viper, sir?” Cascade asked, her eyes shaded with worry. “Shouldn’t she be back by now?”
“Probably, yes,” the Mandrill replied. “But I have to admit, your partner showed somewhat more ability than I might have expected from a first-timer when he escaped. Perhaps it’s simply taken her a little time to get an accurate fix on him.”
“So you won’t send me out to finish him?”
“Not yet.”
“I can’t believe I’m doing this, either,” Owen said, handing Viper back her gun.
“Tell you what, Bodyweight,” she said, “I won’t shoot you or your girl. Not this time round. After that, you’re fair game, too. OK?”
“Don’t shoot the research team, either.”
She smiled slightly, and shrugged. “If you insist.”
“Then I guess we have a deal.”
“Where’s the ammo?”
“In the ventilation shaft. Pick it up on the way.”
“Sir! It’s Viper! She’s returned!”
“Ah. Excellent.” The Mandrill’s smile swept across to cover Cascade. “You see, my dear? People like Viper always get their kill in the end. You just have to give them enough time.” With a wave of his arm he indicated the biochemists at their frantic, tired work. “Which is why I need this… With this I shall be able to give them enough time away from me, yet keep them bound to their task.”
He turned, and strode across to the re-erected mesh barrier, outside which Viper approached.
Meanwhile, in the venting above, Bodyweight fell silently forward, lack of gravity failing to pull him down onto the venting. Falling into position.
“Well, my dear?” the Mandrill asked Viper.
“Dead, my lord,” she reported tersely. “My apologies that it took so long.” A wave of relief washed through her; it looked like his bloody pheromones weren’t affecting her in the least. That meant she could actually do this; not go back to service.
Bodyweight halted his forward motion by reversing gravity until he reached zero acceleration, then suspending himself in a field of zero gravity. Nothing registered this, not even the pressure scanners; it was an inexplicable quirk of Bodyweight’s artificial gravity that it had virtually nil effect on external gravitational forces.
The Mandrill’s smile widened, yellowing teeth gleaming in the light of the laboratory. “Excellent. Technicians, open this barrier.”
As the green-clad techs did so, Viper stepped through the gap. “My lord, we may as well leave this corridor open. You have my assurance that there is no one else alive in this facility.”
Owen had managed to get to a position where he could just see Chloe’s face. It was difficult to tell beneath the mask she still wore, but she didn’t seem to be taking the news at all badly. Indeed, if anything, she was happy about it. He swore under his breath; no way was the Mandrill going to get away with this.
The Mandrill turned back to his precious bench of biochemists, surveying computer screens full of progress he couldn’t hope to understand. Viper began to move closer to Chloe, palming the syringe from her belt. This next bit could be the crucial moment, the one that turned the fight in what she considered her favour...
Owen shot out of the venting, cannoning into the Mandrill, and Viper reacted fastest - having been waiting for it. She snatched Chloe’s arm and drove the syringe into it, dumping the contents into her quickly. Then she vaulted the nearest lab bench and hunkered down, pistol out.
“Squad!” she barked. “Hold your fire, except to defend yourselves!”
Owen, meanwhile, had managed to get one hand around the Mandrill’s neck, and was shutting down the oxygen flow in his windpipe.
Among other things, such actions tend to raise the stress level of the person attacked, which makes for adrenaline, which makes for a faster heartbeat… which means that if something’s introduced into the bloodstream, it gets around faster.
He injected the Mandrill with the antidote to his pheromones. He couldn’t be sure it would work, of course, but he couldn’t help feeling that shutting production down at base was worth a try, at any rate.
He kept the air in the mutant’s windpipe trapped for as long as he could, trying to choke the man, but he’d forgotten to keep watching the fight around him.
The two WPCs gripped his arms and dragged him off their master. A quick jerk of three times normal gravity away from them got him free, and he whirled around, drawing a syringe from his improvised bandolier. He caught the first officer by the arm and dumped the contents of the syringe into her, and then got hit by a torrent of water and smashed aside.
He swore bitterly. Looked like Chloe wasn’t free of it yet, then. Nothing to do but wait it out and try to avoid drowning…
The Mandrill, gasping for breath, struggled up into a sitting position. Blood trickled slowly from where Owen had thrust the syringe. He looked on, baffled, at events proceeding around him. Viper had, clearly, disobeyed him; gone totally in his face, no less. He hadn’t seen a woman do that since Shanna O’Hara, and she’d never fallen to his control in the first place. He didn’t like what this might mean. Had his cyborg heart replacement, necessitated by his killing, somehow disrupted the long-term efficiency of his pheromones? How could that possibly be?
And…
And suddenly Cascade, his very latest conquest, had turned from fighting for him. She was at her lover’s side, helping him to subdue one of the policewomen he had taken. The man was holding… a syringe.
Ah.
All was explained, he felt.
Or as explained as it needed to be, at any rate.
Now, what the hell could he do to counter this threat?
He slowly regained his feet, and immediately rocked backward as a molten lead slug impacted on the gleaming metal of his cyborg half-torso. Viper had turned her Gauss pistol against him.
In this situation, escape was clearly the only solution. He turned to run…
…and was almost at the door when s wall of water dashed him against the wall, leaving him dazed and gasping on the floor.
Two gauss rifles wielded by Viper’s squad suddenly appeared in his face. Out of the corner of his eye he could see Bodyweight ushering the biochemists out and away. He closed his eyes in resignation, only to open them moments later when someone coughed in what was clearly a way meant to attract his attention.
The rifles had been replaced by Viper and Cascade, who now stood over him.
“You really pissed us off,” Chloe said, evidently speaking for them both. The two women beat him unconscious and left him for the police.
Bodyweight and Cascade stopped off where the highest-ranking police officer was trying to fend off a television crew.
“You can go in now, sir,” Owen said, only just keeping a triumphant grin under control.
“-and - sorry?”
“I said, you can go in now, sir. The culprit is subdued.”
“Subdued how?”
“Unconscious, sir. We’ve also rescued the hostages. Have fun, sir.”
“Wait!” This from the reporter. “Who are you?”
Owen, turning away, paused. He straightened up and looked back at the camera. “Bodyweight,” he said, and smiled.
“Cascade,” Chloe chimed in.
“We’re new in town,” Owen continued. “Goodbye for now.”
Well, that’s yer lot, folks. Hope you enjoyed it; drop me a line if you did.