she woke up as the monster loomed above her. Every time, Noa wished she could change it, make it so that she, too, had been consumed. It would have been better for a lot of reasons.
Tonight, though, she woke up as soon as her body landed in the snow. She bolted upright, confused by the strange surroundings and the fact that she was fully dressed. Then she remembered: the operating table, the apartment she’d rented.
She still shivered, despite the fact that she had three wool blankets and a down comforter piled on the bed, and the heat remained on eighty. She got up, keeping one of the blankets wrapped around her shoulders as she turned the dial on the thermostat up even higher. Noa padded to the fridge, but the sandwich looked even less appealing than it had earlier.
The clock on the stove read three a.m. Noa stretched an arm above her head. She’d been asleep for about five hours, but felt as if she’d slept for days. She picked up her laptop and stretched out on the couch. Idly she wondered how Linux was doing. He was a ratty feral cat that had started hanging out on the window ledge outside her apartment shortly after she moved in. Noa figured that the previous tenant must have fed him, because he’d sit there for hours, giving her a reproving look. So she caved and started setting out a bowl of dry food every day. He refused to actually enter the apartment, but would nap there on nice afternoons, paws tucked beneath him. Once he even let her pet him.
Linux was a survivor like her, she reasoned. Despite his scraggly appearance, he probably had a half dozen people in the neighborhood leaving out food for him. She couldn’t worry about him right now.
Noa checked her email. Nothing new from Vallas, so he’d either given up or was angry about her slow response. She chewed her lip, debating whether or not to send him an email. She could just give him the other files. But she was worried about what he planned to have /ALLIANCE/ do with them. She needed to find out more first. She’d have to finish going through the folder branded with her name.
Noa opened another document and started skimming it. To keep track, she’d categorized them into subfolders as she identified them—that way she wouldn’t end up going through the same material twice. One was labeled “Stats,” another “BS” (for the unintelligible doctor’s notes), and a third, “Possible.” This third category was the most promising. Even so, 99 percent of the contents was scientific jargon that went over her head. But Noa was convinced that if she could decipher enough of it, she’d be able to figure out what was going on. Three documents in, Noa stumbled across a typed summary of some sort of experiment. She couldn’t understand everything—it was a quagmire of words like histopathology, encephalopathy, and hemizygous and homozygous cervidized —but the gist was that some sort of operation had been performed. It made reference to other charts and documents, and on the final line, which read, “Results,” someone had typed: “Pos/Neg: see note.”
Unfortunately the note was apparently in another document. Noa cursed under her breath. She’d copied backups from the AMRF’s main server, and they were in a jumble, with no overriding order or organization. The original files and folders were probably arranged in a way that made sense on a separate network.
Noa was skimming a study on “transgenic mice,” whatever those were, when an email alert popped up on her sidebar.
She went back to her inbox and frowned: another message from the mysterious A6M0. This time the subject was GET OUT NOW .
Noa sat up straight and opened the email, a feeling of dread growing in the pit of her stomach. The single line read: You’re not safe there. Leave now .
She chewed her lip. Who was sending these? And why were they messing with her like this?
Noa quickly went to the window and pulled aside the curtain, looking down at the street below. It was
Tonight, though, she woke up as soon as her body landed in the snow. She bolted upright, confused by the strange surroundings and the fact that she was fully dressed. Then she remembered: the operating table, the apartment she’d rented.
She still shivered, despite the fact that she had three wool blankets and a down comforter piled on the bed, and the heat remained on eighty. She got up, keeping one of the blankets wrapped around her shoulders as she turned the dial on the thermostat up even higher. Noa padded to the fridge, but the sandwich looked even less appealing than it had earlier.
The clock on the stove read three a.m. Noa stretched an arm above her head. She’d been asleep for about five hours, but felt as if she’d slept for days. She picked up her laptop and stretched out on the couch. Idly she wondered how Linux was doing. He was a ratty feral cat that had started hanging out on the window ledge outside her apartment shortly after she moved in. Noa figured that the previous tenant must have fed him, because he’d sit there for hours, giving her a reproving look. So she caved and started setting out a bowl of dry food every day. He refused to actually enter the apartment, but would nap there on nice afternoons, paws tucked beneath him. Once he even let her pet him.
Linux was a survivor like her, she reasoned. Despite his scraggly appearance, he probably had a half dozen people in the neighborhood leaving out food for him. She couldn’t worry about him right now.
Noa checked her email. Nothing new from Vallas, so he’d either given up or was angry about her slow response. She chewed her lip, debating whether or not to send him an email. She could just give him the other files. But she was worried about what he planned to have /ALLIANCE/ do with them. She needed to find out more first. She’d have to finish going through the folder branded with her name.
Noa opened another document and started skimming it. To keep track, she’d categorized them into subfolders as she identified them—that way she wouldn’t end up going through the same material twice. One was labeled “Stats,” another “BS” (for the unintelligible doctor’s notes), and a third, “Possible.” This third category was the most promising. Even so, 99 percent of the contents was scientific jargon that went over her head. But Noa was convinced that if she could decipher enough of it, she’d be able to figure out what was going on. Three documents in, Noa stumbled across a typed summary of some sort of experiment. She couldn’t understand everything—it was a quagmire of words like histopathology, encephalopathy, and hemizygous and homozygous cervidized —but the gist was that some sort of operation had been performed. It made reference to other charts and documents, and on the final line, which read, “Results,” someone had typed: “Pos/Neg: see note.”
Unfortunately the note was apparently in another document. Noa cursed under her breath. She’d copied backups from the AMRF’s main server, and they were in a jumble, with no overriding order or organization. The original files and folders were probably arranged in a way that made sense on a separate network.
Noa was skimming a study on “transgenic mice,” whatever those were, when an email alert popped up on her sidebar.
She went back to her inbox and frowned: another message from the mysterious A6M0. This time the subject was GET OUT NOW .
Noa sat up straight and opened the email, a feeling of dread growing in the pit of her stomach. The single line read: You’re not safe there. Leave now .
She chewed her lip. Who was sending these? And why were they messing with her like this?
Noa quickly went to the window and pulled aside the curtain, looking down at the street below. It was
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