✅ Project SETI: Surrogates for Extra-Terrestrial Insemination

Part XXIV: Pursuit

          When Gabriel left the room, he felt like someone was watching him. He turned and looked in either direction in the hallway, but he didn't see anyone. Before he moved away, he pressed a button on the door's push-panel and it locked itself from the outside. Nova could still leave if he so wanted, but something in his gut was telling him to be hypervigilant; the feeling was so strong that it was impossible to ignore.

          He moved urgently through the hallways to the front of Project SETI. He knew a patient was due this morning for a routine sonogram and glanced down at his watch as he made his way over there. It was just a few minutes before eight in the morning, and if the surrogate was on time, they should be out there waiting for him.

          He opened the door to the lobby and looked around, but it was still empty. He was about to ask the receptionist if she'd heard anything from them, but his thoughts were interrupted by a loud tone and an announcement over the PA system:

          "Lockdown initiated. Protocol Delta in effect. Please remain calm ..."

          It repeated itself a few times over and the receptionist urgently moved away from the desk. Protocol Delta meant there were armed and hostile entities attempting to enter or were already within the facility, and staff were responsible for moving to designated cover areas and bringing any patients under their care with them.

          Gabriel briskly turned back through the door to the rest of the clinic, and at the exact same time, his watch began to beep noisily at him. Nova's call button had been pressed, and he took off in a fast sprint back towards his room. As he rounded the corner into the hallway that led to Nova's room, he saw a large man wearing generic-looking light blue scrubs currently attempting to break into the room. As he got a little closer, he saw he had an ID badge from Project SETI hanging from his neck. The side with the photo on it was conveniently pressed against his chest, and he worried for the safety of the other people on staff and where they were right now.

         He picked up the pace and braced to tackle the man to the floor. He saw him approaching and hastily drew an energy pistol from the waistband of his scrubs to shoot the lock off of the door. He barely got his boot in the door when Gabriel attacked him from behind—he sprang up from the floor and shoved his shoulder into the fleshy part of his lower back. He noticed Nova had gotten up and must have been in the process of dressing himself when this occurred, as he was wearing pants and shoes but had the hospital gown wrapped around him as a shirt.

          "Give me that," Gabriel pointed to one of the laser tools on the tray near the gurney as he attempted to get to his feet and keep the perpetrator down.

          Nova fumbled and shook, but got his hands on the cauterizing laser he'd pointed to and tossed it to him. Gabriel reached out and grabbed it, stomped on the man's shoulder and pinned him on his back in the process, then aimed the laser at his face. When he activated it, the man let out an awful scream as his left eyeball was cut straight through. He then moved it over his neck in two swift movements, and, even though the laser was designed to make cauterized incisions, the carotid artery he'd breached started to rapidly bleed out— it was too thick to cauterize with the messy movements Gabriel had made. He started to choke and stared up at him with desperate and angry eyes in his final moments of consciousness.

            While Gabriel was doing that, Nova had reopened the small compartment on the transport bed that housed his personal effects and hastily finished getting dressed. When he had his shirt on properly and could see again, he gasped quietly at the startling amount of blood that was pooling on the floor.

          "We need to leave," Gabriel said intensely while he pocketed the pen-like laser. He opened a supply drawer nearby and pocketed a scalpel on his way to the door. "Now."